Timing In Everything
by Sashile
Summary: An aircraft carrier off Bahrain is attacked during a Family Weekend and training exercise with the Israeli navy. While Ziva investigates Israel's involvement, Gibbs and Abby are called to help DiNozzo figure out what happened. Tiva; latest in my series.
1. Chapter 1: Opening

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 1-Opening**

_Disclaimer: As much fun as it would be to have a part in NCIS, I don't. I just borrow the characters/settings/etc and use them for my own (and, I hope, your) enjoyment. _

_Summary: A bomb goes off on an aircraft carrier filled with sailors, Marines, family members, and a group of Israeli sailors on a training mission in the Fifth Fleet, just off NSA Bahrain, getting everyone's attention. While Ziva is investigating what, if anything, the Israelis have to do with it, Gibbs and Abby make their way to Bahrain to help DiNozzo figure out exactly what happen, and with any luck, find a child who has been missing the explosion in the process._

_A/N: I promised I'll be back :) Once again, this is going to be a long story that fits into my previous series of stories (the most recent of which was _Fallen Angels_), which means that yes, this is a story with an established Tiva relationship (marriage is pretty established, I think). I recommend you read those stories first, for this to completely make sense. As a reminder of them, I've given you a brief run-down before we get started with this one. I've been busy, which was why writing has been slow, and writing will probably continue to be slow. I'll do my best, but please be patient with me._

Deep Lacerations: _A former Army medical examiner joins the NCIS team temporarily, and almost immediately, the MCRT has a case that makes them realize that there is more to her story than they previously realized._

Of Jews and Gentiles:_ The murder of a Navy lieutenant and attempted murder of his active duty, Jewish girlfriend gets the attention of the MCRT. As they look into the case, they realize that it is only the most recent of a string of attacks against Jews and their non-Jewish significant others. Tony and Ziva go undercover as a couple, and in the process of running down leads and figuring out who is responsible, their relationship becomes much less undercover than they ever planned._

Truths and Covert Lies: _Ziva's father is hospitalized in Israel and requests for Ziva, and by extension Tony, to fly to Tel Aviv. What Director David asks of her is so appalling that she fails to realize what is happening right in front of her eyes, and after the director is murdered, it is up to her, and the rest of the MCRT, to figure out why._

Consequences of Love and War: _A Navy physician is abducted from her office in Afghanistan, and her husband, a former Marine scout sniper, calls the only person he could think to call: his former gunnery sergeant, Leroy Jethro Gibbs. The investigation takes them through the underground world of the Taliban and those who finance the organization, making Gibbs realize that there is more to his team than he previously thought._

Lethal Fractures: _Dr. Sonja Gracy is back from Hawaii, and her first case is actually the latest in a series of her old cases, the most recent murder of a serial killer she had been following throughout her career. This time, the killer made a mistake and killed a Marine sergeant, and the MCRT is determined to figure out who it was and why. The why, however, proves to be too close for comfort for Dr. Gracy._

The Price of Honesty: _NCIS Special Agent Stan Burley is murdered in his apartment in Bahrain, and Director Vance assigns Gibbs and the rest of the MCRT to the case to figure out why. After they solve the case, Vance promotes DiNozzo to Burley's former position, and the director of Mossad reassigns Ziva to join him._

Fallen Angels: _a senior JAG goes missing in Bahrain. A junior pilot falls from the skies under suspicious circumstances. Although these seem completely unrelated at first, it doesn't take DiNozzo in Bahrain nor Gibbs and McGee in DC long to realize that there's more going on than they first realized. And while McGee finally gets a girlfriend who is neither crazy nor involved in criminal activity, Tony and Ziva tie the knot in a way that only they can._

_I also recommend _Falling on Unyielding Ground_, over on Fictionpress (same pen name; there's a link on my profile here on FFN). There are going to be appearances of characters that are introduced in that story, beginning, in fact, with this opening. I'll try not to make this one too dependent on that one, but it might help with the background and figuring out the relationships._

_I think that's pretty much it (and yes, I do realize that those were very, very brief run-downs. I didn't want to ruin too many endings for people who hadn't read the stories). _

_I hope you enjoy, and don't hesitate with any reviews/thoughts/questions/feedback/suggestions/etc._

* * *

Lieutenant Commander Siobhan Mox hated the Navy's blue camouflage uniforms. As a Fleet Marine Force medical officer, and wife to a Marine, she had very strong opinions about the use of camouflage uniforms. They were to be worn in combat situations, when the camouflage pattern helped one to blend into the background, and the sturdy boots allowed one to walk as comfortably as possible for miles while wearing a heavy pack and weapons and worrying about the need to suddenly start running for one's life. There was no need to wear a uniform that only blended in with the miles of ocean surrounding them, and combat boots on a ship were just another thing that took too long to lace up properly and served no real purpose, as one was never in combat and wouldn't have anywhere to run to even if one wanted to.

On her previous two deployments, both of which were with Marine combat units, she wore desert MARPAT camouflage every day—with 'U.S. Navy' over her left breast instead of 'U.S. Marine Corps'—and was proud to do so. She had nothing against camouflage. She just didn't like _blue_ camouflage.

Fortunately, as one of the two critical-care trained physicians manning the ICU aboard the _U.S.S. Harry S Truman_ for her six-month deployment to the Middle East, she didn't have to wear the dreaded blueberry camouflage uniform often. Like any ICU on land, the recommended uniform was scrubs and tennis shoes, not blue camouflage and black combat boots; the fact that she had the 2000-0800 shift meant that hardly anyone who cared was still awake when she was at work. She could sneak into the ICU's locker room in her PT uniform—which she didn't care for, either, but this wasn't the time nor the place to get into how her skin looked against the bright yellow shirt—and change into her scrubs there. Anyone who saw her between her quarters and the locker room just looked the other way, undoubtedly amused at the sight of one of their docs trying to sneak around in the improper uniform.

Not today, unfortunately. Today was halfway through a family weekend. They had been anchored off Bahrain, the home of the Fifth Fleet, since Thursday, with all of the wives and husbands and children eager to see where their family members worked crawling around the ship. And when there were so many dependents around, the Navy had to look good, which meant that everyone in the Navy had to look good. And look good which in the proper uniform of the day, which was, unfortunately, blueberries.

She sighed as she surveyed the dreaded uniform, piled somewhat neatly in her locker, and reluctantly began peeling off her scrubs to put the blue camouflage back on, just so she could walk the few decks back to her quarters and change again for a few hours of shut-eye amidst the chaos of a fully-awake aircraft carrier. A forced night-owl on this deployment—she tried telling people it was by choice, but the fact was that the other critical care doctor, in addition to being an adult doc instead of a pediatrician like her, was a captain and therefore two ranks higher than her—she had to completely switch her schedule. She got up at 1600 every day and hit the gym for an hour, without fail. Depending on the day, she either put in seven miles on the treadmill—another thing she hated about being on a ship; she preferred to run outdoors—to keep her in shape for when she'd be returning home to her marathon-running husband, or lifted weights to keep herself from dying of boredom from running on the treadmill every day. Then she headed to the officer's mess for breakfast while they were beginning to serve dinner for everyone else, and then made her way back to her quarters for some alone time and family time before she got ready for another twelve-hour shift in the small ICU. During the week, she'd sit down to talk to Zack while he was at work back at Quantico. On the weekends, she got him at home while he was taking care of the boys, and that was even better, getting to hear about what Andrew was learning in kindergarten and just listening to Ben, at all of fifteen months old, as he babbled excitedly at the webcam. But Zack was out on a field-training exercise with his unit and the boys were staying with the grandparents for the week, who, despite it being almost 2012, didn't yet have a webcam.

She was still thinking about her boys as she crossed the threshold into her quarters; the fact that she was thinking about them at the end of her shift, when she was usually too tired to think about anything, was enough to tell her that she was definitely going through withdrawal from her Mox boys, the three of them. She sighed again and glanced at the family picture she had taped to her mirror, taken right before she left for the deployment six weeks ago. It was one of those rare weekends that both her and Zack had off work, and they had taken the boys to a nearby national park for some light hiking in the nice fall weather. Andrew had just gotten his haircut before starting kindergarten—she was sad to see those springy curls go, but if there was one thing Zack was going to put his foot down about, it was his boys being squared away and looking like the future Marines they undoubtedly were—and was looking so much like his father that strangers would come up to them when they were out and comment on it. Ben was much more her boy, with his lighter coloring—nowhere near her Irish pastiness, but not nearly as dark his half-Kenyan father—and the same serious expression she often wore at work, while he looked out onto the world from his position in the backpack Zack was wearing.

She missed her boys, and the fact that the Fifth Fleet-based crew of the aircraft carrier got to have their families on board while hers was in Virginia, well, it just wasn't fair.

She sighed as she peeled off her uniform blouse and tossed it onto the bed, groaning as she bent down to untie the shiny black combat boots she hated so much. Although the ICU was hardly hopping, she was still drained after each shift, and between her exhaustion and the almost-undetectable motion of the ship, she would fall immediately into a deep sleep, which was all she wanted to do now. For some reason, though, she was too keyed up to even think about lying down.

Now removed of her blue camouflage blouse and combat boots, she sat down at her computer to check her email, reading through the standard junk emails about things that were going on back at Bethesda—Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, not that she would ever call it that aloud—when she remembered she still needed to call Jeff Cunningham back. One of Zack's former cross-country teammates from Annapolis, he had gone onto medical school and became a pediatrician, like her, and the two had worked together at Balboa in San Diego for a few years between deployments, before she returned to Bethesda for a neonatology fellowship and he had left for deployment as a senior medical officer with 1st Recon, of all the silly things to do. He was now an infectious disease fellow at Balboa, and a few weeks before she left for deployment, was captured outside his apartment and taken as a prisoner to Yemen, earning a few broken bones before being returned to San Diego. She had gone out to California when he got back to see him and see for herself that he was okay and in one piece and that his girlfriend, a Marine-turned-NCIS special agent, had everything under control.

Of course she did. Kim Tomblin always had everything under control.

They had talked a few days before on Skype, their conversation cut short by him needing to go into work, and she promised him she'd call him back, but between the hours at work and the preparations for Family Weekend, that had slipped her mind. She did some quick calculations and determined that it would be around 1930 in San Diego. Perfect; there was almost no chance he was still at work. He might be having dinner, but Kim would understand. Marines always seemed to understand when their dinners were interrupted—especially Marines who lived with Navy doctors.

She had barely begun to dial in the number on the computer when her radio, which she likened to the pager she carried back home and had about the same affection for, beeped to indicate that someone was trying to reach her. "Dr. Mox," she said, quickly grabbing it and hoping it wasn't something emergent.

_"Yes, ma'am, it's HM2 Gadson. Ma'am, the skipper's son was complaining of a hurt knee—"_

"And he's in my office now," Dr. Mox finished for the corpsman. Perfect. Just what she needed after a full shift.

_"Yes, ma'am. You're the only pediatrician on board, ma'am."_

Of course she was. As ridiculous as it was for the Navy to put a neonatologist in an adult ICU—despite what the admirals may think, there were big differences between a one pound preemie and two hundred pound sailor—it was equally ridiculous that that same neonatologist would be the only pediatrician on board on a weekend that the ship was crawling with kids. "I'll be right there, Gadson."

_"Thank you, ma'am."_ Siobhan sighed and reached for the tossed-aside remnants of her uniform, tying up the boots as quickly as she could before she headed out toward the medical bay.

She was almost to the tiny closet off the ICU that served as her office when she noticed a sudden change in the air of the ship. She frowned and stopped, looking around and trying to figure out what it was while seeing if anyone around her noticed the same thing.

And then the ship exploded.


	2. Chapter 2

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 2**

_A/N: I was going to jump right into a Tony and Ziva chapter, but then I was watching HBO's _The Pacific_, and came up with this chapter. Hope you don't mind the intrusion :) We'll get to the Tiva (and to the meat of the story) with chapter 3._

* * *

Dr. Jeff Cunningham had already seen the HBO miniseries _The Pacific_ all the way through, a few times—there's really not much that can be done while recovering from a couple broken bones in the leg and a couple more in the arm, aside from watching a lot of TV—but he didn't protest when Kevan Tomblin changed the disks in the Blu-Ray player and started the fourth episode of the day and the ninth since he and Kim arrived in Washington the day before. It was a Tomblin thing—anything related to the Marine Corps was a Tomblin thing, really—and the last thing he wanted to do was get between a whole lot of Tomblins, not any time and definitely not at the moment, not while they were paying tribute to Corporal (Ret) Jackson Tomblin, USMC, and the war he fought and was maimed in.

Besides, _The Pacific_ was a good series.

Kim was curled up on Kevan's couch next to Jeff, her head resting on his lap, the same position she had been in since lunch, which probably made it the longest time she had ever sat still, for anything. She had been incredibly quiet and subdued since their plane landed in Wenatchee, and if it weren't for the fact that he knew why they were at her family's orchard, he'd be worried about her.

They were there to bury her grandfather.

In addition to fighting in many of the battles that HBO portrayed so well in their miniseries—including losing a hand at Iwo Jima—Jack Tomblin had owned and operated an orchard outside Pateros, Washington; raised three children; buried a godson during Vietnam; and helped take care of his grandchildren every summer and whenever his son—Kim's father—was deployed overseas with the Corps. He and Kim's other grandfather, Daniel Tojo—another former Marine—were probably Kim's largest influences growing up. Even now, safely into her thirties, she still talked about both men with the sort of reverence that most adults lose for their elders somewhere in their teenage years. Not that Jeff could blame her; he hardly had the same interactions with the World War II veterans as she did, but even he knew how much of a loss the death of Jack Tomblin was to the world.

He twisted a lock of her long black hair between his fingers and opened his mouth to say something that seemed somewhat supportive in his head, but before he got the opportunity to say anything, was interrupted by something hitting him in the back of his head. "What the hell?" he asked, turning around in his seat on the couch to see Kanten—or was it Karsten? He still hadn't figured out how to tell Kim's identical older brothers apart, and forgot to make note of what they had been wearing at lunch—with a bowl of popcorn on his lap and his dark eyes fixed on Cunningham.

"We need to rehearse," the helicopter pilot—he still didn't know _which_ helicopter pilot—informed him.

"Rehearse?" Jeff asked, frowning.

"Carrying the casket," whichever Lt. Colonel Tomblin that was replied, rolling his eyes.

"I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to carry a casket," Jeff informed him, turning back toward the television. Another piece of popcorn hit him in the back of the head.

"It's a military funeral." He was now pretty sure that it was Kanten; the elder twin was usually more of an ass than the younger one.

"Give it a rest, Kanten," the other twin said with an eye roll of his own. Well, at least that confirmed his suspicions of who had been throwing popcorn at him.

"I don't want a POG doctor fucking up my grandfather's funeral," Kanten protested.

"I know drill and ceremony," Jeff said over his shoulder, this time not turning to acknowledge Kanten. "I went to Annapolis."

"That's even worse." The twins had both gone through NROTC at the University of Washington and had no love for Naval Academy grads.

"I can't hear the TV over your fucking bitching," Kim protested, still not lifting her head from Jeff's lap. "Shut the fuck up." In many ways, it was amusing to see Kim around her brothers; she reverted back to the incredibly profane, tough-as-nails Marine that she had been when Jeff met her in Iraq, six years before.

Kanten started to protest to his little sister's protest, but his words were cut short by the sudden opening of Kevan's back door, admitting Chris Tomblin into their midst. If there was one thing that could get Kanten to shut up, it was his father. For that matter, if there was one thing that could get anyone to shut up, it was Chris Tomblin. The man was in his sixties and still one of the toughest men Jeff knew. And he had deployed with a battalion of Recon Marines. "Load 'em up," he ordered into the room. "We're heading to the funeral home to rehearse."

"Take that, fuckers," Kanten said victoriously. They all ignored him.

"We just need the pallbearers," Chris continued when Kim stood up. "You can stay here, Kim."

"With the women and children. Gee, thanks, Dad."

"Hate to break it to you, Kim, but you are a child," Kevan said as he walked by her to grab his coat. She glared and flipped him off as she returned to the couch.

"Don't forget your crutches," she ordered, directing the command at Cunningham. He grumbled but did as she said, knowing he was supposed to be using them all the time anyway and that he didn't really have a good excuse for not doing so, other than the fact that he hated using them and was just plain stubborn.

The funeral home was in Brewster, about a ten minute drive from Tomblin-Tojo Orchards, a ten minute drive during which no one spoke, and then the nine men filed into small building just as silently. Tojo, now closer to ninety than eighty and no longer able to help carry a casket, was an honorary pallbearer and just took a seat to watch the rehearsal and likely offer any criticism he could come up with. He already looked amused as he watched his son-in-law arrange the seven younger men—Jack's six grandsons and Cunningham—to their proper places around the casket.

It was a point of contention in the Tomblin family that Cunningham, Kim's unmarried boyfriend—with whom she was living in sin in California, but that was another point of contention entirely—was a pallbearer, when the husbands of Jack's other two granddaughters weren't, as they were all married into the family and therefore should have had more status at the funeral than they were given. Jack, however, wasn't a stupid man, and had the foresight to be very specific when making his funeral plans of who he wanted carrying his casket, and everyone named—his son, all of his grandsons, and Cunningham—had some sort of military experience. It was, after all, a military funeral.

"You know what you're doing, Cunningham?" Kanten asked as they made their ways to their designated positions, Cunningham to the left of the casket—on account of the recently broken left wrist that was still in a splint—and right behind the eldest Tomblin twin.

"Probably more than Nichols," the pediatrician replied, nodding over at Kanten's cousin. Dr. Dave Nichols was a veterinarian; he had served in the Army for three years after graduating from vet school, before returning to Montana to join his parents' practice. Cunningham doubted he did a single day of drill and ceremony in the vet corps.

"I might remember how to stand at attention," Dave joked. "Is there more to this than that?"

Kanten gave an exasperated eye roll. "I give commands—"

"Actually, Kanten, I believe _I _give the commands," Daniel Tojo interrupted, an amused glint in his eye and the carriage of a man who wasn't to be crossed. "I may not be young enough to help carry a casket, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be leaving this to some young punk of an officer who'll just fuck it up."

Kanten actually smiled at his grandfather's insults, or maybe at the thought that there was someone out there who thought an officer pushing forty was still a 'young punk'. "You're in the wrong crowd for the officer jokes, Jiji. I think we actually outnumber you."

"Doesn't matter how many there are, Kanten. Without NCOs, you officers are pretty fucking lost," Kevan chimed in. The good-natured ribbing between the officers—Kanten, Karsten, Nichols, one of the Frueh men, and Cunningham—and the enlisteds—Tojo, Chris, Kevan, and the other Frueh brother—went on for a few minutes, and although Cunningham would never have thought he'd be teaming up with Kanten and Karsten against Kevan for anything, it was actually a little fun.

Then Chris called them back to order, and they got started, Tojo taking his position at the head of the casket to give commands and the others doing their best to follow them. Cunningham had to admit that Kanten had been right when he said they needed to rehearse; despite the military training they all had, it took them several tries before they all managed to lift the casket from its stand in perfect unison, and several more tries before they could lift it to their shoulders. And that was before they tried walking with it.

They had probably been at it an hour when Cunningham was ready to call it quits. Not only was he pretty sure they it down—they had successfully lifted the casket to their shoulders, did a precise ninety degree marching turn, and got the casket to the front door and back, a few times—but both his wrist and leg were throbbing. He had weaned himself off narcotic pain killers a couple of weeks before, but right then, he wished he still had a couple Percocets. "Cunningham!" Kanten scolded. "Your foot work is getting fucking sloppy."

"How the fuck do you know?" he shot back. "You're in front of me. You can't even see me."

"I can hear your footsteps. Or should I say, footstep, foot thud, footstep—"

"My leg is fucking broken!" The large fracture boot was keeping him from executing the proper military bearing, but there wasn't much he could do about that.

The argument between the two officers ended when the doors to the funeral home opened, Kim following closely behind her mother and carrying the crutches Cunningham had intentionally left in the car. She didn't have to say anything as she stood there, eyebrow raised, for him to know that she was ending the rehearsal right then and there.

He made his way back to where she was still standing, his leg now hurting more than he would ever admit. He had barely started weight-bearing—strictly with crutches, according to his surgeons—on that leg again, and just spent an hour not only weight-bearing without crutches, but doing so while helping carry a heavy casket. Not his wisest move, and the look on Kim's face was enough for him to know that she agreed.

Still not speaking, she handed him a bottle of water and shook out one of the giant 800 mg ibuprofen tablets from the bottle. His eyes didn't leave hers as he washed the pill down with more than half of the bottle. "You okay?" he finally asked.

She looked beyond him to the casket, then back to meet his gaze, before she nodded. "Yeah," she said softly. "I'm getting there," she amended. "You? How's the leg?"

"Hurts like hell," he replied without thinking, forgetting that all the men in her family were within earshot. He hated admitting weakness in this crowd, especially to a woman who had two Purple Hearts.

"Let's call it a night, then," Chris said. "Get some rest before the funeral tomorrow."

"You need someone to step in for you tomorrow?" Dave Nichols asked Cunningham, probably thinking of his brother-in-law and cousin's husband. Cunningham shook his head right away.

"No," he replied. "I promised Jack I'd do this, and I will." It was one of two things that Jack asked him to promise; it was much easier to agree to be a pallbearer than promise the WWII vet that he would marry the man's granddaughter. Being a pallbearer didn't require getting Kim to agree to anything.

He accepted a kiss from Kim before accepting his crutches, and then they got in the cars and headed back to the orchard to do exactly as Chris ordered: get some rest.

The next day was going to be a long one. He just had no idea how long.


	3. Chapter 3

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 3**

_A/N: Okay, here's the Tiva chapter I promised :) I hope you enjoy!_

* * *

NCIS Special Agent Tony DiNozzo had no idea how two adults who had lived their entire adult lives in one-bedroom apartments had so much stuff. Or why both apartments worth of stuff had to come into Bahrain from DC on the same day.

"Where do you want the couch?" He blinked himself out of his reverie and took a drink from his coffee cup while he considered the question. There were really only two options—the living room and the den—and while he knew the proper answer, a large part of him was really tempted to give the other.

"That one goes in the den." The words had appeared out of nowhere before he had the opportunity to speak, and he frowned as he turned and considered the source of them: a strikingly beautiful and deadly Mossad case officer dressed in jeans and an Ohio State tee-shirt much too large for her slender frame. His wife of about two weeks, and if this whole moving experience was any indication, soon to be his widow. Because if she wasn't the one who physically killed him, she was going to drive him to an early death.

"Why does all of my stuff end up in the den?" he complained. Ziva David gave him one of her trademark 'did you really just ask me such a stupid question?' looks.

"Because my furniture looks better in the living room," she said simply.

"Says who?" When he got another one of those looks, he pressed on. "I _like_ my furniture."

"Which is why it is going in the den, with your entertainment system. I figured you would be spending more of your free time there than in the living room."

Damn it. He hated when she made sense like that. "Well, my bed goes in the master bedroom." He had a king; hers was barely a queen with a mattress that was slightly harder than their new granite countertops.

"Of course," she replied, in a tone that told him that that was her plan all along and she wasn't being conciliatory.

He was pretty sure this was what marriage was all about: the wife got everything she wanted. The husband got someone to make all his decisions for him, whether he wanted her to or not. He was starting to see why Gibbs had warned him against married. And why his former supervisory field agent had so many divorces in his track record.

"I do not think either of our tables will work in the dining room," Ziva mused aloud, staring at the two small dining tables on their driveway. "Mine is far too small. And yours would look better in a college student's apartment."

"Hey! There's nothing wrong with that table!" She looked up at him and rolled her eyes.

"We will have to go shopping for a new dining set," she declared, her eyes back on the old tables, a thoughtful expression on her face. He sighed but didn't say anything; there was no point in wasting the effort. Once Ziva declared she was going to do something, she was going to do it, whether that was buying a new dining room set, or leaving NCIS to take her old job as a Mossad control officer in order to move to Bahrain, or renting a house.

She looked back up at him and frowned. "What is the protocol for ridding oneself of old furniture near a Navy base? If this were a college campus, you could leave it on the side of the road, but I do not think the kingdom of Bahrain would appreciate the litter much."

"Is there a Craig's List for Manama?" he asked, only slightly joking. Ziva's frown deepened.

"I do not know what that means."

"Haven't you ever tried to get rid of stuff?" he asked in exasperation. "Wait a second… How'd you get rid of your stuff when you moved back to Israel a few years ago?"

"It was not my furniture to get rid of. I rented my first apartment furnished."

"You rented a furnished apartment?" he scoffed. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that I did not know how long I would be staying," she shot back, which officially ended their back-and-forth, leaving Tony alone to think about how far they had come. She had joined the team as a need to temporarily get away from her family, and ended up staying six years. They had started by not trusting each other at all, gradually warmed to each other, learned how to argue without physically lashing out on the other—no matter how tempting that may have been—learned how to become friends, become lovers, and somehow now wore matching wedding bands.

Didn't mean the fighting had decreased any, though.

Ziva had wandered off to direct the flow of boxes from the moving truck toward various rooms of the house, leaving Tony standing out in the yard with his coffee, trying to stay out of the way and thus stay out of trouble.

He hadn't been out of the way—or out of trouble—long when the phone in his pocket buzzed, and he was torn between grumbling at the interruption and directing thanks toward the heavens for the same. He pulled the phone from his pocket and frowned at the display: Freiler.

Great. It was either a case or an invitation to junior agent's house for a barbeque, neither of which he was terribly excited about.

He had been splitting weekend calls with Special Agent Todd Freiler since he took over as the special agent in charge of NCIS-Bahrain two months before, and for the most part, it was working out well. The majority of their cases were either no-brainers or could wait until the following Monday. Freiler still called about almost all of the cases switchboard called into him, but he was developing a fairly good instincts about what needed their immediate attention and what could wait.

"Let me guess," he said as he answered the phone. "Bar fight on a Friday evening? Teenage dependent stealing bottles of liquor at the NEX?"

"_Uh,"_ Freiler stammered. _"Neither of those. Not this time."_ He paused, seeming to collect his words. _"I think you should come in. And I think you should bring Officer David—Ziva."_ If it weren't for the serious tone in Freiler's voice, Tony would have teased his junior agent for his continued formality and inability to refer to anybody by their first names.

"It's Ziva's Sabbath," DiNozzo replied. He knew he shouldn't be difficult, but it was just so easy.

There was a momentary pause at the other end as Freiler tried to figure out how to respond to that statement without sounding offensive. _"I wasn't aware Ziva celebrated the Sabbath,"_ he finally replied.

"We're celebrating by arguing about where we're unpacking boxes and furniture," Tony explained.

"_Oh. Well, I think this is a little bit more important than that. Not that settling into your house isn't important, but—"_

"So we have a case," DiNozzo interrupted, fully aware that Freiler would keep rambling uncomfortably until he was stopped. "But what does that have to do with Ziva?" The Mossad officer in question had just stepped out of the front door when her name was mentioned and was now stopped five feet away from where her husband was standing, staring at him with a frown on her face.

There was another long pause on the phone as Freiler tried to figure out exactly what he needed to say. _"The _Truman_ was attacked,"_ he finally said, instantly making Tony feel bad for being difficult. _"There's not a lot of info yet, just that they don't know who was responsible for it."_

"Casualties?" DiNozzo managed, already heading into the house to grab the keys to the NCIS Charger he was using until his Mustang came in.

"_Don't have an exact number yet,"_ Freiler replied, _"but it's quite a few. And it includes Special Agent Ryan McCaw, the agent afloat. He's dead. But it gets worse."_

"We've got a dead NCIS agent and probably a number of dead sailors. How does it get worse than that?" DiNozzo snapped. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ziva's eyes widen.

"_It's a family weekend,"_ Freiler explained. _"And there's a group of five officers and forty midshipmen from the Israeli Navy on a joint training exercise."_

Great. Freiler was right; it was going from bad to worse. "Let me get this straight," he said slowly. "We have an aircraft carrier that was attacked. It was filled with sailors, dependents, and Israelis. The NCIS agent is dead. Others are, too. And we don't know what happened."

"_That about sums it up,"_ Freiler agreed. _"The ship's anchored within fastboat distance, but they have helicopters on standby to take us in. There's a dive team in the water performing search and rescue. I don't think they know exactly how many people are missing, but there are some."_

DiNozzo didn't know if the helicopters were offered by base command in efforts of prompting NCIS to go or if Freiler had taken the initiative and called and ordered them up. He'd give Freiler the benefit of the doubt. "Good," he said crisply. "I'll grab Ziva and we'll be on our way. Give Gabi a call and tell her to meet us at the office." Talk about timing; his new senior field agent had just arrived in the office a few days before. "And I need you to do us a favor."

"_Uh, okay?"_

"Call Bryn and tell her to come to our place. The movers are unloading now, and we need someone to supervise."

"_I'm not sure how much she'll be able to help with the unpacking. Or even supervising,"_ Freiler replied. His wife was currently eight and a half months pregnant with their fourth kid.

"You're right. Scratch that. We'll get Cohen or Dardik to come over." After all, there was no point in having a Mossad case officer as a wife if you couldn't use that relationship to get Mossad operatives to do your chores for you. "See you in a few." He hung up the phone to see Ziva waiting with an expectant expression on her face. "Grab your gear," he told her. "Looks like NCIS and Mossad are working together again."


	4. Chapter 4

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 4**

_A/N: To celebrate my birthday, I'm giving you a chapter... think of it as a party favor at my birthday party :) In case you feel like gifts, I'm accepting them in the form of reviews._

_As far as the story, the next several chapters all overlap/occur in the same time. You'll see where that comes in in a few chapters. Enjoy!_

* * *

It had only been a few hours of dealing with them, but Ziva David was already tired of midshipmen in their early twenties. She had somehow forgotten from the time that she was that age that all boys in that age range, regardless of race or country of origin, were exactly the same, and these officer candidates were no different.

The Mossad title and shield managed to grab their attention for a few minutes, and their training officers managed to get them to hold it for a few more, but despite that, it took probably half an hour for them to lose interest. Ziva knew from being at a similar point in her own training that nothing—not an explosion, not even the murder of a loved one—could break through the cynical, warped, and hazy exterior that such constant, strenuous training produced. As far as they were concerned, it was little more than a free day from training, and Ziva David stood between them and their freedom.

The group of forty-five—five training officers, forty midshipmen—was short by two, one of the midshipmen still in the infirmary and one unaccounted for and missing from the _Truman_ entirely. Ziva wasn't nearly naïve enough to believe that 'missing' would have a positive outcome; apparently, most of the remaining midshipmen were in agreement. None seemed too optimistic that their fellow officer candidate would be joining them again.

Confident that the injured midshipman wouldn't be going very far very soon—the report Ziva had received from Tony was that he was unconscious and intubated, but expected to recover—Ziva focused her attention on the five training officers, but kept the thirty-eight midshipmen in the same room. Keeping so many people of interest in the same room had to be against one of Gibbs' rules—she knew he had one about suspects, but she didn't consider any of these officers or midshipmen suspects, at least not yet—yet she had a suspicion that this would be the best way to question them. The officers would be the ones to give the official training mission; the midshipmen would tell her what really happened. Eventually. She had to work them down first. Without them being realized they were being worked down.

She frowned. That didn't seem just right in her head, but unfortunately—or was it fortunately?—Tony wasn't around to correct her.

"I need to know about the training mission you were on," Ziva said, directing the question toward the officers, but keeping the midshipmen in the corner of her eye. There was no need to be indirect. At least, not yet.

The five officers looked at each other before the most senior finally spoke. "It was a routine training exercise," he said, "with the Americans demonstrating the function of an aircraft carrier."

"Which seems necessary," Ziva said dryly. "Seeing as Israel has so many of them." There were none.

"That is why the training exercise with the Americans _was_ necessary," the officer—_Sgan Aluf_ Pizanis—replied. "If we are to expand our navy to include aircraft carriers, we must be proficient in their operations."

Ziva's eyebrows rose. "I was not aware that the current American administration was comfortable enough with Israel to allow that to happen."

Pizanis snorted. "I was not aware that Israel, as a sovereign nation, required American approval. Or comfort."

"But you do require their training?" Ziva's remark didn't get a response from any of the five officers, but one of the midshipmen let out an amused snort. He got a glare from the _segen mishne_—ensign—the most junior of the five officers. Ziva ignored the exchange, keeping her eyes on Pizanis with an expression on her face that told them that she was in charge and wasn't afraid to demonstrate that fact. "I need to know everything about this mission," she said slowly. "I need to know who set it up, why it was set up, and who knew about it. _Especially_ who knew about it."

Pizanis seemed to get the message. He visibly deflated a couple of notches before he spoke. "I do not know with whom the training mission originated on the American end," he said. "It must have been someone high enough for such authorization, of course, but I do not know whether it was someone higher or lower than the Secretary of the Navy. It was posed as a means to extend a hand of goodwill. I believe that is what the Americans call such things." Ziva decided it was close enough. "We were invited to bring forty midshipmen to join the _Truman _for three weeks of collaborative training. It came down through the admiral in charge of training."

"And who knew about this?" Ziva pressed. Pizanis glanced over at his officer and midshipmen before turning back to the Mossad officer.

"It was not a classified mission," he replied. He gestured toward the others. "I am assuming everyone told their families, friends, lovers. I do not think of this simple training mission as something large enough to gather the attention of the press, but if it was, there would be no reason why it could not be printed."

Ziva didn't see anything on the faces of any of the others in the room to make her doubt that Pizanis's words were true, at least as far as they knew. She filed his statements under the category of things that she would have Dardik look up to confirm, the next time she spoke to her analyst. At the moment, the Mossad intelligence analyst and computer genius—Avrum Dardik's ability to hack into a computer made Tim McGee look like a middle schooler doing research for a class project—was busy looking into the backgrounds of all forty-five Israelis who had been on the ship when the bomb exploded. By now, he probably knew what all forty-five had for breakfast and which football teams each supported.

She moved onto the next topic. "I need to know exactly what everyone was doing during the duration of this training mission. Do not leave anything out." And this was where it was important to have the midshipmen listening in as she pretended to only speak to the officers; in her peripheral vision, she saw a number of the officer candidates squirm uncomfortably in their chairs. The same way people squirmed uncomfortably when they were afraid something they didn't want others to know was about to become public. She would address those squirms later. At the moment, she kept her attention on Pizanis, pretending to not even notice anyone else was in the room.

It was not _Sgan Aluf_ Pizanis who replied, but _Seren_ Zambruska. "I was in charge of the training assignments, ma'am," the stiff lieutenant replied. He glanced over to the midshipmen, then back at Ziva, completing missing her glower at being referred to as 'ma'am'. "Midshipmen Aaronsohn, Gift, Hurwitz, and Segal are all in medical school and are medical officer candidates. They had been working in the infirmary under Lieutenant Cooper, one of the American physicians."

"And Midshipman Segal is the one who is currently a patient in the infirmary?" Ziva asked. Zambruska nodded.

"Yes, ma'am," he confirmed. "The midshipmen had just arrived to the infirmary for their shift. The infirmary was not far from the explosion and Midshipman Segal took a forceful strike to his chest."

"He has a pretty severe collapsed lung and rib fractures, ma'am," one of the midshipmen—probably one of the other medical students—chimed in. "But Dr. Pitt said he'll recover."

"You can speak to Officer David if and only if you are asked a question directly, Midshipman Aaronsohn," _Seren_ Zambruska admonished. He turned back to Ziva. "I apologize, Officer David." She nodded for him to continue. "The other thirty-six midshipmen were spread throughout ship's operations," he informed her. "We had a few in every department, with the exception of the sensitive areas of the ship. Intelligence and Communications." She nodded; made sense. Israel and the United States may be allies, but even allies were still representatives of foreign governments.

"And Midshipman Spivak?" she asked, naming the midshipman who was still missing. "Which area of the ship was he assigned?"

The officers looked at each other and Zambruska cleared his throat before responding. "Nuclear reactor, ma'am."

Ziva blinked in surprise. "You were not allowed in the Communications sector, but your midshipmen had roles with nuclear materials?"

"No, ma'am," he said quickly. "They did not have any contact with the nuclear material itself. Very few people do, in any situation. And they were always supervised closely." He had to take a few seconds to collect his thoughts. "With the exception of the nuclear material itself, there is nothing sensitive in the reactor section. There are no differences between nuclear technologies of any nation. An Iranian nuclear physicist could come aboard and would not learn anything new about American nuclear capabilities. There are only so many ways to split an atom."

Ziva frowned, thinking about what Zambruska had just said and trying to fit it into everything she knew about this explosion thus far, which wasn't much. It was a relatively small-yield explosive—eleven people dead out of more than 5500, while still eleven dead, was something that could have been much worse—in a relatively minor area of the ship—inside a storage bay that was close to the medical bays, but not close enough to do any serious damage—and it didn't make sense. If you want to kill people, you don't set off a small-yield explosive in a minor area of an aircraft carrier; you go high-yield in a high-yield area, such as the nuclear reactors. Same thing for making a political statement; if you don't make it big, nobody's going to notice.

So what was the point? At the moment, the 'why' was bothering her more than the 'who'.

Neither of which was bothering her as much as the fact that a midshipman who had been working at the nuclear reactor was now missing after an explosion nowhere near the nuclear reactor.


	5. Chapter 5

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 5**

_A/N: Thanks for the birthday wishes! It was a pretty good day. And thanks for the reviews. For those of you patiently waiting for a reply, I'll get to it. I just don't know when._

* * *

Ziva excused the officers from the room in a way that made it obvious she wasn't asking, before she herself stepped just outside to call Avrum for an update. She had debated making the phone call while still in the room with the midshipmen she was calling about—she had even debated making the call on speaker, so they could all hear what her analyst had discovered about them—but ultimately decided the pretense of privacy would be more effective. After all, they were still adolescent boys; if they thought she was talking about something they weren't supposed to hear, they were sure to listen in.

To her surprise, it wasn't Avrum Dardik who answered the phone after the second ring. _"How's my favorite case officer?"_ David Cohen asked as he answered.

"Cohen," Ziva replied with a sigh. The young operative was one of the best she had ever worked with—his skills challenged her own at that age—but also one of the most irreverent. Maybe that was why they got along so well while she simultaneously wanted to kill him and find a clever place to hide the body; he reminded her far too much of the man she just married. "Please tell me Avrum did forget about his assignment and wander off."

_"No, I just thought it would be fun to make you nervous."_

"We need to work on your definition of fun. Can you put Avrum on the phone?"

_"I also wanted to let you know that all of your belongings made it safely into your house."_ In all of the excitement of the aircraft carrier, Ziva had completely forgotten about the arrival of the household goods and how she assigned her operative to supervise the process. She felt a pang of guilt for taking advantage of a highly-trained operative and assassin in such a manner, but as Tony liked to say, there was no point in being in charge of people if you couldn't take advantage of them every once in a while. He had certainly demonstrated that with McGee often enough.

A few seconds later, the proper voice came on the line. _"I have been working on the names of the midshipmen you have given me,"_ Dardik began, not even acknowledging the fact that Cohen snatched the phone from his desk. Ziva wondered if he even noticed.

"We should start with Midshipman Spivak," Ziva replied.

_"Alright," _Avrum agreed. He probably couldn't care less where they started, as long as they started somewhere. _"Midshipman Michael Spivak. He is from Jerusalem—"_

"Avrum," Ziva interrupted. "I am more interested in anything that contributes to him still being missing."

_"Oh." _There was a brief pause. _"I am not really sure what would contribute to him being missing from an American aircraft carrier."_

Ziva sighed; sometimes, working with her new team was trying, much more trying than it should have been. "Start with his military service."

_"Right. He was enlisted in the navy and served on a submarine for two years. He was selected for officer training and was enrolled in the nuclear engineering program. He has two more years of training—"_

"Avrum," Ziva interrupted again. At this rate, it would take them more than a day to get through the officer candidates, and it was already past 2200, Bahrain time. "Any disciplinary action, any reason that anybody would have for him not to be trusted?"

_"Nothing,"_ the analyst replied confidently. Realistically, Ziva knew that that was 'nothing that I've found', but for Dardik, that really was nothing. If there was anything, he would have found it. _"He has always received high marks on his evaluations and his coursework in the nuclear program. The only disciplinary action was during his second year enlisted, involving 'fraternizing' with a female soldier while on leave—"_

"And?" Ziva prompted.

_"And nothing. The soldier said the sex was consensual. Everything was dropped." _

Ziva frowned, wondering if that had anything to do with their case, and doubting it. Sailors were always having sex while at port, in foreign ports and domestic. Soldiers weren't really any different, and considering the majority of both groups—as well as airmen—were in their late teens and early twenties with no family obligations, there was usually a fair deal of sex going on off-duty. And more than there should have been on-duty, if her own time in the IDF was any indication. It didn't mean anything. "Okay," she said slowly, trying to fit this piece of information into everything she knew about Spivak, which still wasn't much. "Tell me about the others on the cruise." She made a point to glance into the room and then quickly look away, just enough for the midshipmen to know that she was talking about them.

_"For the most part, they all have excellent records."_ That made sense; it wasn't easy to get selected for officer training, and then to be selected for a training exercise on an American aircraft carrier on top of that meant they were dealing with a pretty elite group of sailors. _"Two had juvenile records, Midshipmen Gans and Zilka. Gans was caught painting graffiti in the Christian sector of Jerusalem, and Zilka was one of three implicated in the assault on a fellow teenager at the age of fourteen."_ Ziva nodded slightly; sounded like typical teenage boy stuff. Those two were just unfortunate enough to get caught. She'd still talk to them, though.

"What about their families?" she asked Dardik. "Any protests, anything political?" If this were an attack on the _Truman_ as a form of protest for the Israeli presence, the first place to look would be anyone who didn't want them there.

_"Midshipmen Levi, Katz, and Chazan have family members in the Knesset,"_ Dardik replied. _"None of these family members have records of statements or voting against Americans or American allegiances. None have any known associates interested in overthrowing the government." _Not for the first time, she was amazed at the vast amounts of knowledge he managed to collect in a relatively short period of time, but he wasn't done. _"Midshipman Malach has a mother-in-law in the media,"_ he continued, _"but I have not found any evidence of information on this training exercise being publicized."_

"Mother-in-law?" Ziva repeated, making a face. "You mean some of these guys are old enough to be married?" Talk about making her feel old; they were practically children, and some had been married longer than she has.

_"Six are married,"_ Dardik informed her. _"Their ages are—"_

"Never mind that," she interrupted quickly. She sighed and again looked into the room, at the thirty-eight midshipmen looking back at her. For all of the information Avrum had managed to collect, none of it was telling her anything about why the _Truman_ currently had a hole in its side. "Look for all information on the training mission as well as the attack," she instructed her analyst. "I want to know what everyone is saying and where all of the information is coming from. Get me the reporters' sources, if you can."

Dardik stated his understanding of the assignment and they ended the call, leaving Ziva to finally get to the midshipmen and find out just who knew what. "Midshipman Aaronsohn," she barked. The midshipman's eyes widened as far as they would go, a look of absolute terror on his face. She softened her voice somewhat before continuing. "Tell me about your time in the infirmary today, from when you arrived through the explosion."

Aaronsohn relaxed slightly. "Yes, ma'am," he replied. He cleared his throat. "It was nothing out of the ordinary. We arrived a few minutes before our shift started, at 0800 Zulu time. Dr. Cooper was already there. He assigned us each to a patient to take a history and present back to him." At the look on Ziva's face, he quickly said, "It is good practice of our English, ma'am."

She waved aside his aside—as well as his continued use of 'ma'am'; was she really getting that old?—and he continued. "I do not know the exact time of the explosion, but I believe it was shortly before 0900?" he waited for confirmation, which she neither gave nor denied, so he continued on with the story. "Josh—Midshipman Segal—was seeing a patient closest to the bulkhead, and, I guess, closest to the explosion. He fell onto a storage container in the corner and broke his ribs. He was having a hard time breathing, so we took him to the ICU, which was in the next section."

Ziva nodded slightly; nothing in the story sounded suspicious in the least. That left one midshipman who wasn't at the meeting to look into. "Who can tell me why Midshipman Spivak would be near the explosion?" She hadn't really been expecting an answer, so instead of listening for one, she was watching the young men for tells—she was pretty sure that was the poker term Tony used—that they knew more than they wanted to let on. She didn't have to wait long. "Midshipman Costa," she said, addressing one of the midshipmen who had looked guiltily to his left at the question. "You seem to know the answer."

The tall midshipman swallowed thickly before reluctantly nodding. "Yes, ma'am," he confirmed. He cleared his throat, looking decidedly uncomfortable. "Michael and I have known each other since grammar school," he began. "We went through basic training for the Navy together. He, uh, he always had this way with, well, with _women_, ma'am. Never could keep away from them."

"It had gotten him in trouble before."

If the midshipman had looked uncomfortable before, it was nothing compared to what was now on his face. "Yes, ma'am," he finally said. "With a girl—uh, soldier—in the infantry."

"Who was the woman this time?"

Costa either didn't know, or was just reluctant to answer. Finally, one of the other midshipman did it for him. "Petty Officer Leah Jackson," he replied. "She worked in Communications, which was right next to the section that was bombed. Spivak was going there to visit her after his duty shift." He took some nasty looks from his fellow midshipmen, and just shrugged them away. "What?" he asked them. "She would find out anyway. She is _Mossad. _They find out stuff like that."

"Thank you, Midshipman," Ziva said politely. She was ready to ask a follow-up question when her phone rang: Tony. It must be time for a status update, and although she knew that technically, neither was no longer required to tell each other anything that they had found out, that they both—all—would. This was too big for some urinating contest about whose case it really was. "You are all dismissed to your quarters," she addressed the group before answering the phone. "Yes, Tony."

_"Status meeting,"_ her husband replied. _"Five minutes, NCIS office."_ And then he hung up the phone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Timing In Everything: Chapter 6**

_A/N: As I mentioned a few chapters back, this group of chapters is all occurring at the same time; while Ziva is chatting with the midshipmen, this is what DiNozzo is doing. Next we'll see what Gibbs is up to, and so on and so forth. So really, the story isn't moving forward at all..._

* * *

Within the first few hours of being aboard the _U.S.S. Harry S Truman_, DiNozzo had learned a few valuable things. One: bombs on boats were bad. Two: calling an aircraft carrier a 'boat' when interviewing Navy officers always earned a few questions about how long he had been working with the Navy.

Three: the skipper was absolutely useless to interview when his five-year-old son was missing.

Captain Barry Mehler was as any father of a missing five-year-old would be, completely distraught and not able to focus on even the most simple questions. He would start to answer, then interrupt himself with something about needing to call his ex-wife, who was staying in a hotel in Bahrain, to update her on the search for their son, Wyatt. DiNozzo tried as hard as he could, but after talking to the guy for almost thirty minutes and getting nothing, he just got frustrated with how much time he was wasting. He told the captain to take care of what he needed to take care of and that they'd chat later.

Fortunately, neither the XO nor COB had family on the boat—ship—and both could focus on giving the account of what had happened. Unfortunately, both the XO and the COB had been on the bridge—several decks and sections away from the explosion—when it happened, and neither had anything specific to offer. They said the same thing: the explosion caught them by surprise, they had no idea anything was coming, they thought the waters around them were clear, the Israelis hadn't been giving them any problems, etc, etc.

Of course. It just wouldn't be an NCIS case if they had anything remotely relevant to start with.

Ziva had immediately headed for the section where the Israelis were, to begin doing whatever it was that Mossad did when they interviewed fellow Israelis about attacks on American vessels; Freiler was supervising the collection of forensic evidence; and Gabi Stone, the new senior field agent on the team, was probably lost somewhere several sections away from where she wanted to be. DiNozzo had to smile at that one—Gabi was definitely more at place on land than sea, after a West Point education, five years in the Army, and a decent stint with one of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces. The only reason she now had a job that had anything to do with the Navy was that she had just married Lt. Commander Eric Stone, a Navy dentist, when he got orders to move to Bahrain. Unfortunately for her, the FBI didn't have anything in Bahrain. Fortunately for NCIS, they did. Someone with her credentials—military training, fluency in Arabic, experience in the terrorism field—was exactly who DiNozzo needed to fill the spot in his team left by Special Agent Kim Tomblin, who had pretty much exactly the same credentials. The main differences between the two women were that Tomblin was half-Japanese and petite, whereas Gabi was half-Saudi and taller than Freiler.

With Ziva and his entire team accounted for and all of the main players of the aircraft carrier spoken to, DiNozzo was about to head down to the actual blast site to see if there was anything new when his phone suddenly rang. He glanced down at the display and groaned: Vance.

It had taken him a couple of weeks of his current posting before he realized that phone calls to and from the director were part of the job; for his entire career with NCIS, he had been at headquarters at the Navy Yard, where the director was close enough to the MCRT to literally stand in the background and absorb whatever was going. While DiNozzo had no doubt that Vance had his fingers in pies around the world, he was still fairly certain that the man didn't actually know everything. Therefore, the phone calls to report in on major cases.

He didn't waste any more time answering the call, and Vance didn't waste any time before getting down to business. _"DiNozzo," _he barked into the phone. DiNozzo grimaced; this wasn't going to be good. _"Can you explain to me why I just ended a briefing with the SecNav completely unaware that we had a carrier under attack in the Fifth Fleet?"_

Great. The SecNav was involved already, Vance had been embarrassed in front of his boss, and DiNozzo still had nothing. This was going to be a fun conversation.

"I was just about to call you," he lied. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to figure out where to start.

The beginning was usually a good place.

He filled Vance in on what had happened thus far, from the explosion a few minutes before 0900 Zulu to his team's involvement to what they've done in the investigation and the nothing that they've found. _"SecNav seems to think it could be one of the Chinese anti-carrier missiles,"_ Vance said when he was done.

"I considered that," DiNozzo replied. The Chinese had made a pretty big stink about their new missiles earlier in the year, and everyone knew that their subs liked to lurk around the Indian Ocean and surrounding gulfs. "Pretty sure that's not it. If we can believe their hype—well, that's iffy at best, but still—the _Truman_ would be at the bottom of the ocean right now, not sitting around with a hole in her side. Besides, if it was a missile from a sub, the impact would be under water. This one's quite a few decks up." Freiler had surprised him with that observation, something that made complete sense upon hearing it but never would have been considered without. The kid was good, he had to give him that. "It's definitely a bomb of some sort. We just don't know what sort, who set it, or why."

"_Figure it out, DiNozzo."_ Gee, thanks, Director. Couldn't have figured that out without your advice. DiNozzo rolled his eyes, but Vance wasn't done. _"This is as high profile as it gets right now. I'm sending you some backup."_

"Backup?" He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

"_Gibbs. And Ms. Sciuto, if we can convince her." _DiNozzo wanted to argue against his former boss flying to the other side of the world to work one of his cases, but at the same time, he could use the extra set of eyes, and although Gibbs' vision wasn't what it was when he was a sniper, he still had the best set of eyes out there. And he definitely wanted Abby, and knew there was no way she was going anywhere if Gibbs wasn't going along. So he did the thing that made the most sense: agreed.

"Sounds good."

"_Get some more information on the case and give Gibbs a call. No need for me to dilute the pertinent data when you can give it to him directly."_ Great. Not only was Vance trumping DiNozzo with Gibbs, but he was making DiNozzo be the one who told Gibbs. The Bahrain SAC felt like he had just been played. Nothing new there, at least. _"You need anything else, don't hesitate to ask for it."_

"Sure, Director. Thanks." He hung up the phone and came up with a new plan. He was going to need more information before calling Gibbs, and he knew how to get it.

If he wasn't going to get anything out of the people who had been on the bridge when the bomb went off, it was time to see if he could get anything out of the people who had been around the bomb when the bomb went off.

He got directions to the medical facilities from a passing sailor and headed that way, to find what appeared at first glance to be complete chaos. The medical bay clearly wasn't designed for that many patients; there were patients in beds, patients in chairs, patients standing; doctors, nurses, and corpsmen attending to all these patients; and it was a mess, a loud, disorganized mess.

After a few minutes of standing and observing, he began to pick up on the order, on the roles each of the players played and how they all fit together. Before he could dwell too long on that, his presence was noted. "You don't look like a casualty, sir," a corpsman in a hurry said in passing.

"I'm not." He pulled out his badge and held it up, speaking loud enough to be heard over the din. "NCIS. Anyone have a clear story of what happened?"

The whole room got a little quieter before one of the scrubs-clad personnel spoke. "I can tell you what I know, which might not be anything more than you've got already." She was short, with dark curly hair pulled back in a sloppy bun and a face that would probably always be described as 'cute', even though she had to be closer to forty than thirty. She was carrying the few extra pounds that almost always belonged to people who spent a lot of time in the gym keeping it from being a few _more_ extra pounds, but she had a confident and authoritarian air about her, and the new cast she had on her left arm was enough to tell him that she knew her duty and knew to keep working even after her own injury. It also told him that he had finally found someone who had been reasonably close to the blast. "Dr. Siobhan Mox. I'm one of the critical care physicians, under Dr.—"

"DiNozzo?" Both turned at the sound of the voice, laced with disbelieving laughter. "Holy shit, it really is you!"

"And I see you already know our own Brad Pitt," Dr. Mox said, amused.

"DiNozzo here is living proof of my medical genius," Dr. Brad Pitt joked to Dr. Mox. "Emphasis on the _living_. He survived a bioterrorist's strain of pneumonic plague a couple years ago." He turned his attention to the NCIS agent. "And I heard you survived my colleague's medical care when you had hypothermia a couple years ago. Guess it would have been about three years ago—last time I was deployed."

"That's right."

"Guess NCIS agents are made of some pretty tough stuff." Dr. Pitt tilted his head toward his fellow physician. "Speaking of tough stuff, I'm guessing you're here to talk to Mox about today's excitement." He chuckled and shook his head slightly in Dr. Mox's direction. "She works a twelve hour shift in the ICU, gets a concussion and a broken arm, and _still_ insists on helping with patients, and is going on," he checked his watch, "an additional eight hours of working after her shift. Guess it's the time working with Marines rubbing off on her."

"Something like that," Dr. Mox said, rolling her eyes with a smile. "Or maybe it's the twenty-four hour shifts in the NICU at Bethesda. Or maybe I'm just still here under concussion monitoring." She turned toward DiNozzo and became serious again. "I was in the corridor when it happened, headed to my office. I was told the skipper's kid hurt his knee and that he was waiting for me—I'm the only pediatrician on board. The explosion was a few decks down and one or two sections over from where I stood, but the blast was still enough to knock me into the bulkhead." She shrugged apologetically. "That's all I know."

"The skipper's kid? The one who's missing?" DiNozzo asked. He frowned as he tried to process that. If the explosion was a few decks down and a few sections over, like Dr. Mox said, and the kid was in her office, there would be no reason for him to be missing because of the bomb. It was a good-sized explosion, but not that large. "You're sure he was in your office?"

"Well, no," Dr. Mox replied, as if the answer was obvious. "I hadn't gotten there yet. All I had was the corpsman telling me he was there."

"And the corpsman was…?"

"HM2 Andy Gadson. He ended up with a broken leg and some lacerations. Crazy kid wanted to do his own suturing, but we convinced him it would be better for everyone if we let someone else do it. We set the fracture and sent him to quarters." She gestured around them. "We're too busy here to have a corpsman hobbling around on crutches, and that's probably not going to change very quickly. Unfortunately for everyone involved, our ICU here on the _Truman_ is actually larger and better equipped than the one in the 'hospital' on base in Bahrain." Her air quotation marks around the word "hospital" made her opinions of that small medical facility pretty obvious.

"Okay," DiNozzo replied, jotting the information down on his notepad. He was going to have to swing by Gadson's quarters later and talk to the corpsman; there was something that just wasn't adding up. In the meantime, there was other pressing business to attend to. "I need to make a phone call."

"Sure," Dr. Mox said. "I should get back to my patients anyway." She wandered off and DiNozzo pulled out his phone. He stared at the display for a few seconds before sighing and found a contact that was still very close to the top of the list.

The first part of the conversation with Gibbs went pretty smoothly, considering DiNozzo was telling Gibbs that he needed to get to the _Truman_ and making it sound like it was his idea, not Vance's. _"You thinking terrorism?"_ Gibbs finally asked.

"We don't know what we're thinking yet, Boss," DiNozzo said honestly, "but that's definitely on the list." He picked up on what Gibbs was implying and groaned inwardly; talk about too many cooks ruining the soup. He smiled slightly at that as he mentally played through the list of the various ways Ziva could have messed up that saying. "You think Tomblin should come out."

_"She is NCIS' terrorism expert."_

"I think the director created that post so we have a terrorist expert stateside," DiNozzo finally said. "Besides, with the Israeli connection, we've got Ziva and a whole team of Mossad super-spies helping out."

_"I don't think Vance wants to use Mossad as substitutes for our own people_._ And Tomblin was in Bahrain a hell of a lot longer than you've been." _

"True," DiNozzo acknowledged.

_"Don't think it'll hurt."_

"Okay, Boss, but you have to be the one to call her and tell her that she's coming back to Bahrain." Score one for DiNozzo; he might be getting played, but that didn't mean he couldn't put in any moves of his own.

"Tomblin?" DiNozzo glanced up to see that Dr. Mox had returned and was now looking at him with a strange expression on her face. "Kim Tomblin?"

"You know her?" he asked, covering up the phone. Useless; Gibbs' eyes may be going, but his hearing was still eerily sharp. Might as well pretend for the doctor's sake, though.

"Yeah," Dr. Mox replied, her eyes still wide. "Well, I know Jeff—Jeff Cunningham, her boyfriend—a lot better. We used to work in the peds department at Balboa together."

"You have anything against her?"

"What? No! Of course not! She—okay, that's a long story that I won't get into, but no, nothing against her. Kim's great."

"Well, then you're in luck. It looks like she's going to be joining us." He lifted his hand from the receiver and returned to Gibbs. "You need help convincing her, we've got some leverage. One of the docs on board is a friend of Cunningham's. Lt. Commander Siobhan Mox. Broke her arm and got a concussion in the attack."

"_I'll pass that along,"_ Gibbs replied. With those words, DiNozzo knew one thing for certain amidst the sea of uncertainty: Kim Tomblin was coming back to Bahrain, whether she thought she wanted to or not.


	7. Chapter 7

**Timing In Everything: Chapter 7**

* * *

Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs didn't take many days off. With the exception of his brief retirement to Mexico, he probably hadn't taken a single weekday off. No sick days, no vacation days, no personal days, no comp time days. He just couldn't think of anything that would be a better use of his time than going to work.

Until today.

He still didn't know how he got talked into it, and was pretty sure he was somehow tricked. Although he didn't like the thought that anybody was able to pull a fast one on him, he did have admit that that was exactly what happened, and had a certain grudged respect for Sonja Gracy for pulling it off.

It started out innocently enough: Maddie and Nate Gracy had one of those random days off from school, and Gracy decided that she was going to take the day off work as well and take them down to southern Virginia for a weekend of warmer weather. Born and raised in southern Florida before going to college in Texas, she wasn't a fan of the cold weather that was just settling in to DC and liked to escape whenever she could; as the Deputy Armed Forces Medical Examiner for the National Capital Area, chances to escape were few and far between, so she took advantage of each that came up. She had casually mentioned going sailing while they was down in Virginia Beach, and the next thing he knew, he was talking about his friend who lived down there and had a boat that didn't see the water as often as it should, and he knew he was trapped when he saw that victorious smile on her face.

Women. He should know better by now.

So, realizing that he had somehow committed himself to a long weekend in Virginia Beach with Gracy—and the two little Gracys—he told Vance and McGee that he'd be taking Friday off. He thought Vance was going to fall over in his chair, and if McGee's eyes had gotten any wider, they would have had to take him to Ducky to get them put back in.

Friday morning went as any preparation for a trip with two children under ten would, with chaos over things that Gibbs didn't understand at all and overreactions about minor issues, but in the end, both Maddie and Nate were belted into the backseat of Gracy's SUV, Maddie with her books and Nate playing a game on Gracy's iPhone, and they began the trek down south. It seemed the entire population of the DC metropolitan area had the same plan, the roads so filled with traffic that Gibbs wished he had one of the Chargers, complete with the rarely-used sirens they were all equipped with.

They finally made it down to Virginia Beach in time for a late lunch; after the hours driving and seeming to pick up on Gibbs' frustration with the driving, seven-year-old Nate was in a mood and seemed focused on pestering Maddie. Although she was far more grown up than most almost-ten-year-olds, there was only so much of that that anyone could take, and Gracy had to step in and sit between them before they came to blows. Gibbs had no idea what the harsh words she spoke in German were, but whatever it was, it shut both children up for the remainder of the lunch.

Moods improved significantly when they made it to the marina. Maddie and her mother liked sailing for the same reason: they liked anything and everything to do with the water. Sonja had been a collegiate swimming champion, even competed in the Olympic Trials while she was in college, and if her braggings of her daughter could be believed, Maddie was well on the way to meeting—or even exceeding—those accomplishments.

Nate, on the other hand, loved sailing for what it was: sailing. Probably the only time Gibbs had ever seen him stand still for longer than two minutes was at the marina, watching the sailboats go by. When on the boat, he would watch everything around him: the changes in the wake with changes in direction of the boat, the way the lines would snap and release, the wind filling the sails.

He had the same reactions to being out on the water that Kelly had had at that age.

Gibbs only let his melancholy over thoughts of his daughter distract him for a few seconds before he returned his attention to preparing the boat for launch, and then he took the boat out before turning the helm over to Nate once they were far enough away from the majority of the boat traffic. They sailed for a few hours in no particular path, each taking a turn on the helm, before they began heading back toward the marina as the sun began to set. It was warmer in Virginia Beach than DC, but still November, and getting a bit too cold to be out on the water.

He was just securing the boat to the dock when his phone rang. "Rule number three, Gibbs?" Gracy joked from the boat deck.

"Yeah," he replied, pulling the phone from his pocket. "Gibbs," he barked, not bothering to check the caller ID first.

"_Hey, Boss."_ The voice brought him back more than two months, when he would regularly hear that exact same greeting on the other side of the phone.

"Not your boss anymore, DiNozzo." He didn't bother asking what his former senior field agent was doing calling after midnight in Bahrain. He was sure DiNozzo would get to it on his own soon enough.

As expected, DiNozzo got right down to the point. _"We're going to need you to come out here for a few days_," he said simply.

Gibbs frowned, trying to figure out what kind of case would require the supervisory field agent from a team half a world away. "Last time I was told I had to fly to Bahrain, an NCIS agent was dead." That NCIS agent had been DiNozzo's predecessor and another one of Gibbs' former senior agents. He had been murdered by a Mossad double agent as part of a convoluted plot that, had in been successful, would have resulted in a bioterrorist attack on who-knows-where.

There was a pause on the other end as DiNozzo tried to figure out how he was supposed to respond to that. _"Well, we have a dead NCIS agent here, too,"_ he finally said. _"Just not one of mine. Special Agent McCaw. He was the agent afloat aboard the _Truman_."_

"What do you need my help for?"

_"He's not the only one dead,"_ DiNozzo replied. For the first time in the conversation, Gibbs realized how exhausted his former agent sounded, and he doubted it was from too much sex in the honeymoon period of his former senior field agent's new marriage. _"The _Truman_ was attacked this morning. We have eleven dead and another fifty injured, five critically. Four people are still missing. We have a dive team performing search and rescue in the water." _DiNozzo paused again. _"It was a family weekend, Gibbs, and the Israelis were tagging along for a training exercise. One of the injured and one of the missing are Israeli midshipman." _Another pause. _"And another of the missing is the skipper's five-year-old son."_

Gibbs didn't say anything for a long minute, and DiNozzo decided to fill the silence. _"I've already talked to Vance and given him the SITREP. He agrees that we need our best people on this, and that includes you. And Abby. We have forensics people here, but I don't trust anyone else, not with a case like this."_

Gibbs didn't like the idea of taking Abby on an intercontinental field trip, and he was pretty sure the forensic scientist would agree, but DiNozzo was right: there was a lot of potential forensic evidence in a blast, which included a lot of stuff that lesser scientists would miss. "I'm on vacation, DiNozzo," he said instead.

_"So was I, until this happened. Kinda. But I wasn't at work, that's for sure."_

It was an unfortunate truth in their line of work that crime didn't respect vacations and didn't take days off. "You thinking terrorism?" he asked, resigning himself to the fact that he'd be getting on a plane toward Bahrain in a few hours.

_"We don't know what we're thinking yet, Boss, but that's definitely on the list."_ He seemed to pick up on what Gibbs was thinking. _"You think Tomblin should come out."_

"She is NCIS' terrorism expert."

DiNozzo didn't say anything for a minute as he pondered this. _"I think the director created that post so we have a terrorist expert stateside," _he finally said. _"Besides, with the Israeli connection, we've got Ziva and a whole team of Mossad super-spies helping out."_

"I don't think Vance wants to use Mossad as substitutes for our own people." Especially considering that it wasn't too long ago that Mossad leaked information to the international press regarding the fact that some of those would-be bioterrorists had been released to their governments from Guantanamo, on the express wishes of the US government that those findings not be made public. Gibbs didn't bring that up, mostly because he had a strong suspicion that DiNozzo, through Ziva, was the source of the leak. "Tomblin was in Bahrain a hell of a lot longer than you've been." With her years dealing with IEDs in the Corps and her degree in forensic science, she also had a lot more experience with explosives and figuring out who made them.

_"True,"_ DiNozzo acknowledged.

"Don't think it'll hurt."

_"Okay, Boss, but you have to be the one to call her and tell her that she's coming back to Bahrain."_ There was muffled speaking on the Bahrain end of the phone call before DiNozzo's voice came back clearly. _"You need help convincing her, we've got some leverage. One of the docs on board is a friend of Cunningham's. Lt. Commander Siobhan Mox. Broke her arm and got a concussion in the attack."_

If there was one thing Gibbs knew about Special Agent Kim Tomblin, it was her fierce protectiveness of the people around her, from her family and friends and boyfriend to her coworkers, both past and present. There's no way she'd let an attack on a friend go unanswered. "I'll pass that along," Gibbs replied. He glanced down at his watch before looking up at Gracy and saw the realization at the situation on her face. He was sure she understood. "I'll be there as soon as I can," he promised. He hung up the phone before DiNozzo could say anything further.


	8. Chapter 8

**Timing In Everything: Chapter 8**

_A/N: I actually wrote this chapter first, and the built the story up (and out) from here. Don't worry; I don't understand my methods, either._

* * *

NCIS Special Agent Kim Tomblin kept her eyes focused on the new iPhone in her hands, not trusting her gaze to go anywhere else, not trusting her eyes not to fill with tears if she lifted them anywhere else.

She was still getting used to the new phone—in fact, it was little more than a heavy iPod most days, a fact that annoyed Jeff, who bought her the phone almost two months before, to no end—and she still had no idea why she had grabbed it from the kitchen counter at the last minute before joining the masses of family members—and Jeff—who were heading for the black limos parked outside the family's farmhouses for a long drive across the state of Washington, from Pateros to Tahoma National Cemetery on the other side of the mountains, all while following a solemn and black hearse.

They were burying her grandfather that day, a fact that she still couldn't believe. She had been a Marine officer; she had buried subordinates, superiors, friends, even a lover. But this was Jackson Tomblin, Corporal, USMC, Retired. This was a man who fought the Japanese at Iwo Jima and made it out with his life and without his left hand. This was a man who made friends with the least popular recruit at basic training, one whose last name was synonymous with the enemy everyone was fighting. He encouraged his father to sponsor his new friend's family from an internment camp in Idaho to help on the family's orchard during the war, then returned there when he was done fighting. He was one who taught Kim, and her three brothers, how to shoot, to hunt, to lead, to become Marines, who played a larger role in raising them than he even realized. Who was larger than life in every way describable.

He also knew more about the way things worked than any one person should. When she returned home from Iraq the second time around, with Jeff in tow, he warned her that if she didn't take charge of her love life the way she took charge of everything else, that she was going to lose the one man who bothered to try to keep up with her.

And she did. Until a little more than two months ago. And she wasn't going to make that mistake again.

Jeff took one of her hands and gave it a squeeze, prompting her to finally raise her dark eyes and meet his light ones. "You okay?" he asked for what had to have been the hundredth time in the last few days, worry creased into his forehead.

"I'm just thinking," she replied, aware that it didn't really answer the question. Her eyes now raised, she allowed them to travel over the others in the back of the long car—the twins, Kanten and Karsten, both with the rank of lieutenant colonel still new and shiny on their dress blues, Karsten with his wife and two children at his side, Kanten with the kids sans wife, on account of the divorce proceedings still in process; Kevan, five years her senior and long out of the Corps, in his only suit and with his youngest daughter on his lap, his wife Meghan, still not showing her pregnancy, between him and his older daughter; and then Jeff, standing out in the crowd that had more Japanese blood than not with his blond hair that was just barely within regulation length and bright blue eyes, and distinguished from the Marines and former Marines in his dark blue Navy dress uniform, the two thick bands and one thin on his wrists identifying his rank and the oak leaf giving away his status as someone who didn't fight for a living.

Of all of the men for her to fall in love with, it had to be someone so different. And yet, so similar in ways she couldn't even define.

Her eyes fell back to her iPhone, which had been sitting silently the entire weekend, not even a game of Angry Birds to be played amidst the family's grief, and again, she couldn't figure out why she felt the need to grab it, and her gold NCIS shield in the display cover reserved for ceremonies and funerals, before leaving her parents' house two hours before. Force of habit, really; she was never off the clock, never without a phone—usually her work BlackBerry—more than a foot away.

But if anyone called the BlackBerry, it would be directed to her supervisor, the SAC at NCIS-San Diego, who knew that nothing short of another major terrorist attack on US soil was to bother Tomblin, not this week. And in the case that it was another major terrorist attack on US soil, her supervisor was one of the two people in all of NCIS who knew the number of her iPhone. Director Leon Vance's secretary was the other.

The Japan-based Tomblins—Kanten and Karsten—were talking quietly amongst themselves in Japanese, about what, Kim had no idea, as her knowledge of the language was barely enough to allow her to ask directions to the bathroom in that country, and Kevan was speaking just as quietly while playing a word game with Aya, his oldest daughter, and those were the only sounds in the back of the limo.

Kim's music collection was vastly greater than the 32 GB capacity of her new phone, but that didn't stop her from keeping a random collection of music on it, a list through which she scrolled, mostly to get her mind away from the upcoming burial than out of any curiosity as to what actually made it onto the device.

Snow Patrol was a little mainstream for someone who listened to as much indie music as she did, but she knew the song by title and knew it was one she liked, and seemed strangely appropriate for the moment. In a second, the back of the large limo was filled with piano music and a rich baritone voice, the speaker on the phone actually of a high enough quality that she didn't even need the external speakers she used to always have handy, back when she was leading patrols through Iraq.

_And I don't know where to look / My words just break and melt / Please just save me from this darkness._

Before the song had a chance to continue, it was cut off by the generic ringtone on the phone, the number unidentified on the phone save for its location: Washington, DC.

She looked over at Jeff and both frowned before almost every pair of eyes in the limo fell to the phone. It wasn't the music that had gotten their attention; Kim was never without music, not even as a kid and not even while she was deployed. To this day, one of the best Christmas gifts she had ever received was a Walkman when she was a kid, and she had carried that with her to such an extent that Karsten used to tease that she had her own ever-playing soundtrack to life. No, the music was expected; the ringing of the phone wasn't, not for her and not for anyone else. It wasn't Director Vance, she knew that; his office number was programmed into her phone, but even before answering, she had a feeling she knew where—or, rather, who—it was coming from.

"I'm on emergency leave," she said as she accepted the call, not even bothering with a greeting. If it was who she thought it was, a greeting would have been a waste of breath anyway.

_"Need your expertise,"_ was the response, from exactly who she thought it would be: NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a man who made up his own rules and respected no one else's.

"I think you missed the part where I'm not working," she replied. "And how the fuck did you get this number?"

He ignored the profanity, just like she knew he would. He also ignored the question. _"We have a possible connection to the Middle East."_

"Then call DiNozzo. I'm not working this week, Gibbs. At all." She took a beat before continuing, "We're on our way to bury a real American hero."

That at least got a response out of him, in the form of a few seconds of silence. _"Sorry about your grandfather,"_ he said, and to his credit, he really did sound sorry. _"But this can't wait. And DiNozzo was the one who called me in on this. He agreed you needed to be in on it, too."_

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Now? Really? When she was on her way to bury her grandfather and surrounded by children who didn't understand that her work never stopped? "How can I get in on this, Gibbs? I'm almost on a mountain pass in the back woods of Washington. I'm surprised I have cell phone reception. I'm not even going to be back to a good internet connection for another five days."

Again, a few seconds of silence, in which she imagined the always-stoic agent weighing just how much she needed to know and how comfortable he was in sharing that over a cell phone connection. _"A bomb went off on aircraft carrier off the coast of Bahrain,"_ he finally said. _"The NCIS agent afloat was killed. So were a lot of sailors and Marines."_ There was another pause. _"It was a family weekend,"_ he continued, _"and there was a training exercise with the Israelis."_

"Holy shit," she breathed.

_"I think Cunningham knows one of the docs who was injured,"_ Gibbs continued. _"Lt. Commander Siobhan Mox."_

"Siobhan?" Tomblin echoed with dread. She couldn't help the guilty look on her face as she turned to face Jeff, to see his eyes wide with alarm. "Is she okay?"

_"Broken arm,"_ Gibbs informed her, and she felt the relief wash over her. Dr. Siobhan Mox was a neonatologist, a pediatrician who specialized in newborn care, and one of the first to befriend Jeff when he started at Balboa years before. Not only that, but she was married to one of Jeff's friends from the Naval Academy, a Marine at Quantico, and the couple had two small kids. _"One of the dependents on board for family weekend is missing. A five-year-old kid."_ Holy shit was right. _"This is all-hands, Tomblin."_

A former Marine, she knew what all-hands was, but that didn't change the fact that she was supposed to have an entire week off for the funeral, which was almost more vacation time than she had had in three years. At the same time, this was Siobhan, a woman who had flown across the country on less than a day's notice to make sure that Jeff was okay after his ordeal in Yemen, and a five-year-old that could be anywhere. Damn it anyway. "I can be there in four days, Gibbs. That's the best I can do for you."

_"We'll take it."_


	9. Chapter 9

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 9**

* * *

Abby Sciuto liked her job. She liked her lab—okay, she loved her lab, even more so than she loved her apartment, and that was quite a lot, if you didn't consider the fact that the super was super-strict about the no dogs policy—and she liked the people, and despite the fact that she liked dinners at the Ritz-Carlton paid for by people who tried to woo her away from NCIS with the promise of a fat paycheck and a lab she could design by herself, she had no intention of leaving her current lab or current coworkers behind any time soon.

Even though two of those coworkers had just left her behind. She tried not to get too bitter about that fact, but it was hard. She missed Tony and Ziva. They could have done the whole married-and-happily-ever-after thing in DC, couldn't they? There was really no reason why they had to go halfway around the world. Except for the whole issue of Ziva's boss not wanting her to stay in DC. And the fact that Tony had been ready for his own team for years. But other than that, there was no reason for them to move to Bahrain.

"Abigail, my dear, you seem to be a little distracted." The words, spoken with a rich Scottish brogue, were enough to bring her back on track. She sighed as she began picking at her food with her fork again.

"Sorry, Ducky," she apologized. "I just… I miss Tony and Ziva."

"Ah," Dr. Donald Mallard, NCIS' own medical examiner, replied, that one syllable full of understanding and reminding Abby, yet again, of why she loved everyone at NCIS much. "Ziva has been part of this team for several years. Our own Anthony DiNozzo, several more. What you are going through—what we are all going through—is quite understandable."

"I know," Abby said with a sigh. "But I still miss them."

"And I am not telling you that you should not miss them," Ducky said sympathetically. "Is your food not satisfactory, my dear? You've barely eaten any of your lunch."

"Oh." Abby glanced down at her plate and confirmed for herself that Ducky was right—most of her meal was still on the plate, albeit in a different position on the plate, thanks to all of the pushing around she had been doing instead of eating. Probably the only positive thing to come out of the shuffling of the team—and the routine—that had been going on since Tony and Ziva moved to Bahrain was a resurrection of the Friday lunches that had once been a regular routine between the medical examiner and forensic scientist. They used to always make room in their schedules for these lunches, but then things began to happen—more cases, more urgent cases, unreasonable demands by Gibbs that they always seemed to meet—and the lunches went in the same way as such things always went. Until Tony and Ziva left and Gibbs decided to take his first day off in half a decade. "Do you think Gibbs is having a good time? Of course he's having a good time. Who doesn't have a good time sailing?"

"I am sure both Jethro and Dr. Gracy, as well as Maddie and Nate, are having a wonderful time," Ducky replied.

"It's weird, though, isn't it?" Abby continued. "I mean, Gibbs doesn't take any time off, and now less than three months after Tony and Ziva leave, he's taking a three day vacation to Virginia Beach with Major Gracy and the little Gracys."

"Things change, Abigail. It was the French classical writer of the 17th century, Francois de le Rouchefoucauld, who said 'The only thing constant in life is change.' During one of my seminars as a young medical student at Edinburgh—"

"But _everything's_ changing, Ducky. And it's changing so fast. First Tony and Ziva move to Bahrain, and now they're married, and Gibbs is going off on vacations with the Gracy family, and McGee has a girlfriend—"

"Is that what's bothering you, my dear? That Timothy has found himself a new companion?"

"No," Abby said dismissively, and truly, it wasn't. She didn't mind Harlan McNamee and didn't mind that McGee was dating her. This was probably the first relationship or flirtation or anything that McGee had had since he and Abby had been dating that she _didn't_ feel any sort of jealousy about. Maybe she had just finally completely gotten over whatever it was that kept part of her tied to the senior field agent, or maybe it was just that the Marine fighter pilot and McGee were that good together. Well, as good together as any couple who had only been together for a few weeks could be. "It's just another example of how nothing is the same as it was this summer. I _liked_ the way things were in the summer. Except for the heat, but even with that, I was at work during most of the day, and the lab is kept pretty cool because of all the equipment, so I didn't really even notice that—"

"Abigail," Ducky interrupted, and she sighed again.

"I don't know what it is, Ducky," she admitted. "I just… I just really miss them."

"And I am sure they miss you as well."

"I know," Abby replied. "Tony tells me that every time he calls, and Ziva tells me that too, sometimes, but before you know it, they're going to get caught up in their new married little world and the calls will happen further and further apart, and maybe they'll end up having kids, and then you know they'll _never_ call, because people who have kids never have enough time to call their old friends, and—." This time, she cut herself off, fully aware that she was rambling. "I don't want to lose them, Ducky. We already had to lose Kate. And Stan."

"Ah," the medical examiner with sudden understanding. And maybe he did understand, more so than Abby did, because Ducky always seemed to understand things more so than Abby did. "It is a dangerous job they have, isn't it, my dear?"

"It's really dangerous," Abby agreed with a nod. "And I didn't get to say good-bye, really, to Kate. Or to Stan. I mean, yeah, we threw Stan that going away party when he left to go to Yuma before he was on the _Enterprise_, but when you tell someone good-bye when they're going to another office, you don't really expect it to be good-bye, I mean, forever good-bye. And then we didn't even get to give Tony a good-bye party, because one day he was here, and then Gibbs got the call that Stan was murdered and Vance gave the Bahrain office to Tony and he just stayed there. And you know Ziva doesn't even _like_ parties, and it's not nice to throw someone with that many weapons a party if you don't think they're going to like it. It's just not good sense."

"Indeed it is not," Ducky agreed. "I am still here, my dear. And I am not intending on going anywhere for quite some time."

She knew the words were just to make her feel better, but she didn't mind that so much, because they really did make her feel better. "Thanks, Ducky."

"You are quite welcome." He gestured at her plate. "You should probably have that boxed up and take it with you. You will probably be getting quite hungry once your stomach realizes that it didn't really get anything during this meal."

Ducky had an excellent point, of course, so when the waiter came for with the check, Abby asked him to box up her food, and then they headed back to Ducky's Morgan and back to NCIS to get back to the slow day at work they were both currently enjoying.

* * *

Ducky's prediction about being hungry was exactly correct, Abby's stomach beginning to grumble several hours after their return to lunch. It was late enough, and she didn't have enough pressing cases, that she debated just going home and grabbing another dinner from that new Indian restaurant down the block, but it seemed pointless to let that food from lunch—which was quite good, from what she remembered of it—to go to waste.

She was three bites into her lunch/dinner when her cell phone rang, and for a long second, she stared at the phone, not quite comprehending. It was Gibbs' ringtone, but it couldn't possibly be Gibbs calling, because Gibbs was taking the weekend off and was down in Virginia Beach with Gracy and her kids… And then Abby put two and two together and realized that if Gibbs was calling when he should have taking the weekend off, that something bad must have happened and he needed her assistance right away.

"Hi, Gibbs," she said as soon as she answered, trying to keep her voice as cheerful as it ever was when she answered the phone, but knowing she didn't quite hit it right that time. "How's the beach?"

_"We got a case, Abs."_ Well, that was hardly a surprise.

"So you're coming back to DC?"

There was a slight pause, barely perceptible, but definitely there. _"Not quite,"_ Gibbs replied. _"The case is on the _U.S.S. Truman_. DiNozzo called it in. We're going to need to head to Bahrain."_

"You and McGee and Dwayne and the new probie?" She couldn't even remember the new probie's name; at this point, she figured it was easier not to learn it until they hit the two month mark. Catherine Burke had made it six and a half weeks, which was about six weeks longer than anyone expected of her, but still not long enough to justify the neural pathways that went into remembering her name.

_"Not the team, Abs. Just you and me."_

Abby wasn't quite sure she heard him right. She decided she didn't, because there's no way Gibbs would have told her that she was going to Bahrain. "What was that, Gibbs?"

_"You have enough time to go home and pack a bag. McGee's gonna pick you up and drop you off at Dulles. I'll meet you there."_

He sounded like he was about to hang up, so Abby was quick. "Gibbs!" she exclaimed. "I'm not a field agent! I don't go off to Bahrain! I'm not made for the Middle East! And what about my lab? Who's going to take care of things when I'm gone? I don't trust McGee to do it, not after what happened last time I left, and—"

_"We need our best people on this, and that's you."_

"But Bahrain has lab people."

_"You're better."_ This time, there definitely was a pause. _"A bomb went off on board, Abs. Some people are dead and the skipper's kid is missing."_

"His kid?" she asked, her voice small.

_"The kid's five."_

"But what do you expect me to do, Gibbs? How am I supposed to find a five-year-old kid?"

_"You help us figure out who set that bomb, you'll help us figure out where the kid is. Same as any other case. This one's just on a ship."_

Abby's mind was spinning faster than it was the other night at that _Novel Legion_ concert, only without the ringing ears. She'll be in a lab, it just won't be her lab, and it'll be on the other side of the world, where the sun was bright and hot and there were terrorists and—

And Tony and Ziva. She blinked with sudden resolve. Not only might she be able to help find a five-year-old kid and return him to his father, but she would get to see Tony and Ziva again, and maybe this time she could give them a proper good-bye. Not a _good-bye_ good-bye, but maybe something at the next level, the level that said that she was sad that they didn't work in DC anymore but didn't expect them to die anytime soon. "Okay, Gibbs," she said, her voice strong and determined. "I'll do it. I'll go to Bahrain and I'm going to help you find out who did this."


	10. Chapter 10

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 10**

* * *

It was just past 0000, Bahrain time—which made it 2100, Zulu time, which is what the _Truman _was on, despite their ability to see NSA Bahrain from deck—by the time everyone involved gathered in the office of the late NCIS Special Agent McCaw. DiNozzo was seated behind the desk, Ziva on it, and Todd Freiler and Gabi Stone were seated in the office's remaining two chairs. In Gabi's case, she was seated in that chair after clearing it of the miscellaneous files McCaw had apparently been keeping there. "Ugh," she muttered, moving the pile of papers aside. "Who's taking over _this_ caseload?"

"You volunteering?" DiNozzo asked automatically.

"I think putting me on an aircraft carrier would defeat the purpose of me transferring to NCIS to be near my husband," Gabi replied. DiNozzo nodded slightly and got down to business.

"First of all, we're going to be having company in the next few days." He preempted any questions or protests by putting his hands up defensively. "Not my call," he said quickly. "Vance declared this to be NCIS' number one priority, and the number one priority gets the number one people. Not that you two aren't good," he said, nodding to his two field agents, "but desperate times call for desperate measures. In this case, really desperate." He paused a second, either for effect or for questions, before saying, "Gibbs and Abby were on the first flight out a couple of hours ago. Kim Tomblin will be here as soon as she finishes with her grandfather's funeral and gets a flight out of god-knows-where, Washington."

"I was not aware Abby left DC," Ziva commented. "Ever."

"Like I said, Sweetcheeks, desperate times," Tony replied. "All I can say about all that is that it's going to be a crowded boat."

"Ship," Freiler and Ziva said in unison.

"I like calling them boats, too," Gabi commented with a shrug. "Mostly because it pisses the Navy off."

"You are aware that you _are_ the Navy now, right?" Freiler asked. She shrugged again.

"I'm still adjusting," she replied. "Speaking of adjusting, who the hell designed these aircraft carriers? Is the goal to confuse anyone who manages to get close enough to invade, in case the blue camouflage wasn't confusing enough? Because I sure as hell can't find my way anywhere."

"It will make sense eventually," Ziva assured her.

"Guys," DiNozzo interjected, his head hurting far too much for their usual asides. "I know I like to keep campfires casual, but it's been a long day and we're nowhere near done. Who has anything? Freiler, you're up."

"Sure," the gangly blond agent replied. He stared at his notes for a minute before looking up again. "Obviously, fire control and medical personnel did their thing before I could get in and take pictures, but I photographed the scene as it was when we arrived, before any samples were taken. The bomb was definitely set from the inside. We collected samples of the explosive material and found the fuse. They've been sent to our lab." He glanced down at his notes again, and then back up. "We haven't gotten the results yet."

"Okay," DiNozzo said. "Is there anything we do have the results on?"

"Not yet," Freiler repeated. "But the guys in the lab said the GC-MS should be done by tomorrow morning." He glanced down at his watch. "I guess that'll be later today."

"Or something." DiNozzo sighed and turned to his senior field agent. "Gabi. What've you got?"

"A headache from trying to find my position on this boat?"

Remember his first time on an aircraft carrier—and a few times after that first time—DiNozzo couldn't help a slight smile at that. "Other than that."

Gabi gave a tired smile in reply before becoming serious. "I spent most of the day hanging out with the comms guys, and let me tell you, all my questions about what happened to the AV club after graduating from high school have been answered." She shook her head in wonder. "It's too bad there's no place in blueberries for pocket protectors, because I'm sure—"

"Gabi."

"Sorry, Tony. I tend to ramble when I'm sleep deprived. And according to Eric, I talk in my sleep when I'm stressed. So, the hours of hanging out with the AV club summarized: there was no one around when the bomb went off. Since the _Truman_ left port six weeks ago, radar picked up a number of suspected pirate ships, two Chinese submarines, an Indian frigate, two Saudi ships, and obviously, the Israeli ship that dropped off our midshipmen and their training officers. And a bunch of merchant vessels. They gave me a number, but I didn't think it was important and didn't write it down."

"But nothing the morning of the blast."

"Nope. And only our ships the night before, in case you were thinking someone snuck on board, placed a bomb, and snuck off."

"That would actually be kinda impressive," DiNozzo admitted. He spent a few seconds thinking about that before dismissing it more as something that Ziva's band of merry _metsada_ operatives would do than anything coming from terrorists or Somali pirates.

And speaking of Ziva… "Get anything from our Israeli guests?" he asked, directing the question toward his wife.

She shook her head slightly. "Nothing useful," she replied. "The injured midshipman—"

"Midshipman Segal," Tony finished for her. She frowned at him.

"Yes," she said slowly.

"I spent some time in the medical areas, trying to figure out what was going on," he admitted. She raised her eyebrows at him. After working together for more than six years, he didn't have to work hard to figure out what that look meant. "Sorry. I'll let you finish."

"Thank you, Tony," she replied. "Midshipman Segal is still in the ICU and expected to recover. There is also a midshipman missing, Michael Spivak. His last duty station was at nuclear reactor one for the night shift, which ended at 0800."

"So what was he doing on the other side of the ship?"

"What did you just say about letting me finish, Tony?"

"Ah, marital bliss," Gabi joked.

"Believe me, it gets better," Freiler informed her. They all turned their gazes on the one person in the room who had been married longer than six months. "Sorry. I'll be quiet."

"As Tony just pointed out to us, the reactor is not close to the bomb. It turns out that Midshipman Spivak has a history of going places where he should not because of women. In this case, it was Petty Officer Leah Jackson."

"Communications," Gabi chimed in. "She worked the night shift and stayed a bit late." She paused a second. "She's one of the deceased."

"So I guess she won't be answering any questions about Midshipman Spivak," DiNozzo commented. He frowned and studied the three others in the room. "Gabi, when we're done here, go over to the reactor, talk to the people Spivak had been working with, find out what kind of a guy he's been on this mission, see if anyone noticed anything suspicious."

"Got it," the former FBI agent replied. Ziva wasn't so quick to agree.

"The Israeli component is my investigation," she argued. "If anyone is to go to the reactor to ask about Spivak, it should be me."

DiNozzo knew the look he gave her was a little bit too condescending to be giving his wife, but he was tired and wasn't in the mood to argue. He normally didn't mind arguing, because their fighting usually led to…other activities, but since that already wasn't a possibility, he figured he might as well skip the fighting as well. "Who do you think is going to get answers about whether or not an Israeli midshipman has been acting strange: an NCIS field agent, or Mossad operative?"

"If you send Agent Stone, how do you know that the supervisor will not assume that Midshipman Spivak was behind the explosion, and say things that did not happen?"

"You think he'll lie?"

"Not intentionally," she argued. "I am saying that perhaps he will read too much into innocent situations and believe them to be suspicious. If an Israeli were to talk to him—"

"You're Mossad, Sweetcheeks. That tends to make people a little bit nervous, and nervous people say whatever they believe the person asking questions wants to hear. Gabi's in, you're out. End of discussion. What else have you got?"

Ziva glared briefly, but knew he had a point and dropped it. "The invitation for the training mission came from the US Navy, _Sgan Aluf_—Commander—Pizanis did not know who, exactly. It was not classified, but I do not believe it was highly publicized. Avrum is looking into who knew about it and if any of those people would be grinding axes with the United States or Israel."

"Has an axe to grind," Tony corrected. "Not grinding axes."

"Yes, Tony," she snapped. "And I am tired and have been speaking Hebrew all day and do not care."

"I think we're all a bit tired," he agreed, right as a yawn escaped. He could barely stay awake for his own meeting. "The divers are still in the water and taking the helicopters back and forth is a bit ridiculous, so I got the COB to get us some quarters. We're aft and port." He tossed keys to each of his field agents. "Gabi, talk to the guys at reactor one first, then get some sleep. Freiler, you follow-up with the lab in the morning." He glanced at his watch and tried to do some quick math, but math was never his strong suit and quick didn't work when he had been up for that many hours. "Gibbs and Abby should be landing around 1800 tomorrow. Bahrain time, not Zulu. Let's see if we can get something to report by the time they get here." His attempts at a pep talk were met with tired nods from his team. "Okay, guys. Bright and early tomorrow."


	11. Chapter 11

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 11**

_A/N: Completely off the topic, but we now live in a world with no Osama bin Laden. Pretty wild._

* * *

Considering the number of hours it took to drive from Okanogan County to Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Kim Tomblin was surprised at the number of people who had shown up for her grandfather's graveside service. At the same time, she wasn't that surprised at all. Jack Tomblin had been that kind of man.

It was a clear November day—a rarity for that side of the mountains, which she knew first-hand from her year living there an NCIS probie—but still cold, especially for someone as accustomed to warm weather as she was. She shivered under her long black wool coat and mentally kicked herself, not for the first time, for wearing a black dress and heels instead of a pant suit and more sensible shoes.

Sitting next to her, her mother reached for her hand, and for the rest of the service, the two stayed that way, two leather-clad hands holding onto each other tightly. This funeral was difficult for Kim, having just lost her grandfather; she couldn't imagine what her mother was going through. Jack had been much more than Sally's father-in-law—he was her godfather, a second father, a sounding board when her brother and Jack's son were away with the Corps, a rock to lean on when it seemed her own parents couldn't go on after her brother's death, a confidant when she didn't know what she was doing as a nineteen-year-old mother-to-be with a husband in Vietnam, a free baby-sitter for any or all of her four children whenever needed, and much better at giving advice on any topic than anybody who practiced psychology.

The chaplain recited the prayers and passages before giving the obituary the second reading of the day, the first having been that morning at the funeral. Kim, having helped her mother write it, knew the words by heart.

_United States Marine Corps Corporal Jackson William Tomblin, retired, died on November __3, 2011, in his home outside Pateros, Washington. He was 87 years old._

_ Jack was born on April 7, 1924 to former Marine Lance Corporal William Tomblin, a veteran of the First World War, and his wife, Mary (Ellis) Tomblin. He was raised on the Tomblin Family Orchard in Okanogan County, a place he would always call home._

_ Seventeen years old on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, Jack decided that he would join the Marine Corps and fight the Japanese in the Pacific Theater. At the request of his father, he remained at Pateros High School until he graduated and enlisted in the Marine Corps at the age of 18. During basic training, he met Daniel Tojo, a man who would become a life-long friend._

_ Jack saw his first action as part of the 1__st__ Tank Battalion, 1__st__ Marine Division, at Cape Gloucester, New Britain. He remained in the battalion in battles in New Guinea and Peleliu before he was transferred to the 3__rd__ Assault Amphibian Battalion, with which he fought in Guam and Iwo Jima. Fifteen days into the campaign on Iwo Jima, he received the Purple Heart when he lost his left hand and was taken to the _U.S.S. Relief, _a hospital ship, to return stateside for medical treatment._

_ On the _Relief_, he met Ensign Elizabeth Shuette, a Navy nurse. They were married four days after Jack was medically retired from the Marine Corps, on July 18, 1945. Betty served the remainder of the war at Naval Hospital Bremerton, where Jack was recovering from his wounds. The couple moved to the family orchard in December 1945. _

_ Jack and Betty raised their family at Tomblin-Tojo Orchards in Okanogan County, where Jack was active both in agriculture and veterans organizations. He was involved with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, including two terms as president of the Chelan chapter; the Military Order of the Purple Heart; the Wounded Warrior Project; and the Washington Apple Commission. He also volunteered his time with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the USO, and was known throughout the county for the barbeques he would host when servicemembers returned from war._

_ Jack's top priority through his life was his family, and nothing pleased him more than time spent with his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. He is survived by his three children: Pamela (Edwin) Frueh, Patricia (Harold) Nichols, and Christopher (Sally) Tomblin; nine grandchildren: Kanten Tomblin, Karsten (Tama) Tomblin, Kevan (Meghan) Tomblin, and Kim Tomblin; David (Melissa) Nichols, Sarah (James) Szkwarko; James (Lindsey) Frueh, Justin (Jennifer) Frueh, and Elizabeth (Brad) Evans; fourteen great-grandchildren; and Daniel Tojo. He is preceded in death by his twin brother Joseph, his sisters Margaret and Pauline, his godson Robert Tojo, his beloved wife Betty, and all his brothers-in-arms who served in the United States military._

The rifles cracked in the cold air, making Kim flinch with each round, and then the flag was folded; fortunately, it was folded by the cemetery's honor guards, who actually knew what they were doing, instead of the ragtag group of current and former military who made up Papa's family. Kim couldn't lift her eyes from the white gloves that held the folded flag as the sergeant stiffly carried it toward her father.

"On behalf of the President of the United States, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one's service to Country and Corps."

Out of the corner of Kim's eye, she saw her mother's eyes well up, and realized that that wasn't the first time Sally had heard those exact same words—the first time was when she was barely seventeen years old and burying a brother. As a Marine wife and mother, she undoubtedly had nightmares in which she heard them again, in which she was handed a flag, in which she watched another casket containing another loved one killed in battle lowered into the ground.

Kim had those same nightmares, and she hadn't even gotten to the 'wife and mother' stage yet. Sometimes, there was just too much Corps in her family.

She straightened to attention as the lone bugler began playing taps, and then it was over and they headed back to the limos. They had been driving for probably half an hour when it really sunk in: they had left Papa behind, forever.

For the first time since Kevan called her to let her know that Papa had died, she began crying.

* * *

Of the entire extended Tomblin family—and Jeff—the only person who was old enough to grasp that Kim was leaving because of work and had a problem with that fact would be celebrating her twelfth birthday in a week.

Reiko, Kanten's daughter, immediately responded to Kim's news by beginning a characteristically adolescent tirade directed toward her aunt. The last thing Kim understood was, "You're just like everyone else in this stupid family! You say you care about us, but it's really all about what you want!"

Then she erupted into angry-sounding Japanese that, judging by Kanten's, "Reiko Samantha Tomblin!" was as profane as Kim suspected. The girl was, after all, a Tomblin.

Reiko stormed off somewhere, leaving the adults in stunned silence. Kim doubted any of them had seen such a display since she was that age. "Well, I can't say the timing's ideal," Kim's father finally said, "but it's not as if the terrorists know your grandfather just died."

"If there are terrorists," Kim replied bitterly. She still wasn't happy about getting called to literally fly across the world on the _suspicion_ that the case was related to her area of expertise. "It's a fucking knee-jerk reaction. Badness in the Middle East? Blame the terrorists."

"Because it usually is the terrorists," Kevan replied. "Or Somali pirates. Or Gaddafi. Unless we consider them to be terrorists?"

Everyone ignored Kevan's question. Kim sighed and rose from her chair, draining the last of her beer. "I need to go make sure I have everything I'm going to need."

Twenty minutes later, she was still ranting about getting called in—and still trying to figure out who gave Gibbs her private number—while Jeff was reclining on the bed in the guestroom of her parent's house—the only guestroom of the three houses on the orchard that was on a ground floor, a consideration made for Jeff's injuries—nursing his beer and just letting her vent, when Kanten came into the room. He stood just inside the door for a minute, looking more unsure than Kim had ever seen him look. "Got everything?" he finally asked, nodding toward the MARPAT rucksack on the bed, Kim's go-bag since it had been issued to her while she was in the Corps.

"Yeah," she replied, her voice still bitter. "Investigations don't require much more than khakis and an NCIS tee-shirt."

"Which she always has with her," Jeff chimed in. "As well as her official passport." He turned to Kim. "I'll never question your need to pack that again."

"Thanks, dear," she said sarcastically. She sighed and pushed back her hair before turning to her brother. "What do you need?"

"I just wanted to apologize for Reiko's behavior." It was his turn to sigh. "I don't know what's gotten into her."

"She's eleven," Jeff replied from the bed. "Eleven-year-old girls act like that. For that matter, so do eleven-year-old boys. Believe me." He rolled his eyes. "Adolescence. Get used to it now, because it's here to stay."

"Well, it's gotten a lot worse in the last few months, and I tried talking to her—"

"It's not rocket science, moron," Kim interrupted. "What do you think is going on? Her parents are splitting up because her dad is too much of a fucking _dick_ to keep his fucking _dick_ in his pants—"

"Yeah, thanks, Kim," Kanten interrupted, now getting angry. "Forget it." He turned toward the door, but Kim's voice stopped him.

"Kanten," she said. She sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm just…"

"Yeah," he agreed. He stared at the window for a minute before returning his gaze to his sister. "You're on the evening flight to Seattle tomorrow?"

"Yeah. We're leaving for the airport around two."

"You want to go for a run tomorrow morning? Just us?" He looked over at Cunningham and shrugged. "No offense."

"Not quite in running shape yet," Jeff replied, nodding down to his broken leg, elevated on a pillow. "Besides, I'm not nearly stupid enough to come between two Tomblins and their run. Have fun."

"Yeah," Kanten said with a nod. His eyes fell on Kim's rucksack again, then back up at his sister. "I hope you catch the bastards who did this."

"She always does," Jeff answered for her. "All work and no play makes Kim damn good at her job."


	12. Chapter 12

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 12**

_A/N: Thanks for the reviews. Sorry I haven't been doing a very good job of responding to them; I'm getting absolutely killed at work. Even when I don't get back to you personally, I still appreciate hearing from you!_

* * *

Special Agent Tony DiNozzo woke with a start, bolting upright in the bunk that was trying its hardest to be a bed and ended up hitting his head on the bunk above him, where Ziva was sleeping. He swore to himself as he collapsed back on the bunk. It should have been his and Ziva's first night on a real bed in their house—a fact that Ziva herself commented on, with that predatory glint in her eye that he just couldn't resist—but like just about everything else in their relationship, nothing seemed to go according to plan. Instead of a comfortable king-sized bed in the master bedroom of a house, they were sharing junior officers' quarters on an aircraft carrier.

He remained on the bunk for a moment, listening to Ziva's snores and confirming that his sudden awakening—complete with head smacking and swearing—didn't wake his usually light-sleeping wife. Satisfied that at least one of them was getting sleep, he remembered what it was that caused him to wake from a dead sleep.

He never got around to talking to HM2 Gadson, the corpsman who called Dr. Mox to tell her that Wyatt Mehler was waiting to be seen to her office.

DiNozzo groaned as he checked his cell phone, which he had left on the floor right by the bed, and groaned again when he saw the time displayed there: 4:58 Bahrain time, which meant that any second now, Ziva would—

"What time is it?" she asked, immediately awake, sounding as alert as after a full cup of coffee. He resented her just a little bit at that moment.

"Almost zero-five," he replied. He didn't know why they bothered setting an alarm at home; the woman _was_ an alarm clock. No matter where they were in the world or how little sleep she had gotten, she woke up at five am. If they didn't have anything to do, she'd go back to sleep, but much more often than not, she was out of bed and ready for a five mile run.

Good luck running five miles on an aircraft carrier, Sweetcheeks.

"I should check in with Avrum," she said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and jumping down to the floor. Tony frowned; even she didn't usually have that much energy in the morning. Not until after the run, shower, and coffee, anyway.

"Are you feeling okay?"

"Why?" she asked, frowning over at him.

"Because you're acting like you're on crack. Drugs are not the answer, Ziva." She rolled her eyes at him.

"Are you going to get out of bed?" she taunted. "We have a bomber to catch, remember?"

"Are you accusing me of sleeping on the job?"

"Oh, no," she said with a laugh as she pulled on her khakis from the day before. "I have seen you sleep on the job. I have heard you sleep on the job as well. You snore when you are sleeping at your desk."

"As opposed to you, snoring everywhere you sleep?" She just shrugged. He groaned as he finally pulled himself out of bed. "What's your plan of attack?" he asked as he pulled on his pants.

She raised her eyebrows. "I was not planning any further attacks on the ship. I think it has been hit hard enough." It took his sleep-fogged brain a few seconds to realize that she was joking. What was it about being the guy in charge that required so much coffee? As soon as he took over in Bahrain—and when he took over at the Navy Yard a few years before, during Gibbs' Mexican vacation—he couldn't even consider starting his day without a Gibbs-sized cup of coffee. With plenty of the sugar that Gibbs wouldn't be in the same room as. "I will not know what to do until after I speak with Avrum," Ziva said, finally answering his question. "I will have to see what Gabi has found out about Midshipman Spivak as well."

Tony nodded. "I'm going follow-up on some things with the medical personnel and figure out where to go from there."

"I will be expecting a call for a campfire in a few hours, then."

He couldn't help but smile at that, especially considering that he knew how much she hated campfires. "I love you."

"I know." She rose on her toes and gave him a kiss. "Now go to work."

* * *

After the usual aircraft carrier maze of corridors and decks, DiNozzo finally arrived at the ship's ICU, where Dr. Mox usually worked, to find Dr. Brad Pitt standing at one of the many futuristic-looking pieces of equipment, frowning as he looked down at a patient before keying something into the machine. He continued to watch the patient—or, more accurately, one of the monitors above the patient—for a few minutes before he turned, finally seeing DiNozzo standing in the doorway.

"You haven't had enough of my medical care yet?" the pulmonologist joked. "If you really want, I can hook you up to one of these machines."

"Thanks, but I think I've had enough of ICU care to last me a lifetime," DiNozzo replied. "Unless one of those machines is dispensing coffee."

Dr. Pitt chuckled. "No, we keep that machine in the back." He gestured behind DiNozzo, where sure enough, a Keurig coffee machine, complete with the little K-cups, was standing. Taking Dr. Pitt's gesture as an invitation, the NCIS special agent helped himself to a cup of hazelnut cream coffee before returning to the main ICU area, where Dr. Pitt was still looking over at his patient.

The entire room was just as futuristically decorated as the bay Dr. Pitt was standing in, and even more so than the ICU DiNozzo remembered from so many years ago, with one exception. He pointed up at the overhead lights, "At least these aren't blue. That was freaky."

Dr. Pitt smiled as he finally left his patient, taking a seat at one of the computers. He looked over at one of the nurses. "Hey, Christie, you want to hear about how I cured this guy of pneumonic plague?"

"How'd you get the plague?" the nurse asked, wrinkling her nose. "Messed up the settings of your time machine?"

"Bioterrorism," DiNozzo replied shortly. He didn't exactly have good memories of his time in the biohazard ward of Bethesda, and unlike Dr. Pitt, wasn't interested in reliving them. He turned to the doctor in question. "I thought Dr. Mox worked the night shift."

"She usually does," Dr. Pitt confirmed. "But after working close to thirty hours straight—except for the time it took them to cast her arm—I told her to go get some sleep." A wide grin appeared on his face. "She was starting to order drugs in milligram per kilogram, so I knew the sleep deprivation was getting the best of her." One of the nurses chuckled at the joke. At the blank look on DiNozzo's face, Dr. Pitt explained, "that's how drugs are dosed in the NICU. We do things a little bit differently for adults."

"Dr. Mox usually works in the NICU?" He couldn't be sure, but he thought that's where sick babies went.

"Sure does," Dr. Pitt confirmed. "Most of her patients are under three pounds."

"So how she'd end up working in an ICU on an aircraft carrier?"

"That's the Navy for you," Dr. Pitt replied with a shrug. "It doesn't have to make sense for them to do something." Well, DiNozzo had had enough experience with that throughout his NCIS career. "So what do you need to discuss with Siobhan at," he checked his watch, "zero-two?"

"Closer to zero-five in my time zone," DiNozzo replied. "I need to talk to one of your corpsmen, actually. HM2 Gadson? The one who called Dr. Mox to tell her that the skipper's kid was in her office?"

"Still on quarters," Dr. Pitt replied automatically. He shook his head and sighed. "Of all the things to happen a week before my deployment ends."

"Going back to Bethesda?"

Dr. Pitt shook his head. "No, I'm the director for the pulmonary and critical care fellowship in San Diego now." He frowned. "Speaking of San Diego, did Siobhan say that Jeff Cunningham is coming out here?"

DiNozzo would never get over how small of a world military medicine was and how everybody knew everybody else. It was a little ridiculous. "Not Cunningham," he replied. "His girlfriend is NCIS' terrorism expert." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized that he had just said too much. If there was one thing Gibbs had taught him in the decade he had worked for him, it was that you didn't give any hints about which direction your case was going until you were ready to make an arrest. Revealing that the person who went out of her way to study terrorists and how they thought and acted was coming to the ship was giving away a pretty big hint.

Fortunately, Dr. Pitt didn't seem to notice. "Cunningham's a pretty good doc. We haven't had many patients in common, since he's a pediatric infectious disease fellow and I work in the adult ICU, but there have been a couple of teenagers who end up in my ICU and his consult service. The guy knows his bugs and drugs, that's for sure." Dr. Pitt frowned and got back on track. "Like I said, Gadson's still on quarters. He's probably gorked out on pain meds, but if you want to go talk to him, feel free." He raised his voice. "Does anyone know where Gadson's quarters are?"

One of the corpsmen volunteered the information, writing down directions and handing it over to DiNozzo. "Good luck," Dr. Pitt said, nodding toward the paper.

"Thanks," DiNozzo replied. He nodded toward the patients. "Good luck to you, too."

"Yeah," Dr. Pitt replied. DiNozzo was almost at the door when he called out, "And any time you want to discuss the superiority of Michigan over Ohio State, you know where to find me!"

"What was that, Doc?" DiNozzo asked over his shoulder in reply. "It's been 2912 days since Michigan beat Ohio State at football?" He left the former Wolverine with that little piece of information as he headed back into the maze of decks and corridors to get back to work.


	13. Chapter 13

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 13**

_A/N: Sorry about the delay; FFN wouldn't let me load a chapter yesterday (what? FFN not working? No way!). Anyway, I hope you can find it within yourselves to forgive me._

* * *

Just as Dr. Brad Pitt predicted, HM2 Andy Gadson was obviously on pain medications, and that, combined with the time—0300—meant that this was going to be a difficult interview for DiNozzo. And probably for Gadson, but Tony didn't care about that so much.

DiNozzo's knock on the door was responded to by one of Gadson's berthmates, who squinted at the NCIS shield through sleep-heavy eyes before murmuring something about collecting the corpsman in question, and the door closed in front of the NCIS agent before DiNozzo had an opportunity to respond.

Probably three minutes of standing out the corridor later, a short and thin sailor in his PT uniform appeared at the doorway, struggling with his crutches and the heavy door. "HM2 Gadson, sir," he introduced as he managed to make his way to where DiNozzo was waiting. "Eric said you needed to talk to me about, uh… About… something?"

DiNozzo frowned. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Something. The explosion? You know, the reason you have those crutches?"

"Right," the corpsman replied, nodding sagely.

"Is there someplace we can go, other than standing here in the corridor?" DiNozzo asked when the kid made no motion to move.

"Oh. Uh, yes, sir," Gadson replied. "There's a lounge on this deck." DiNozzo indicated for the corpsman to lead the way, and they headed down the corridor at the top pace the injured sailor could manage.

The lounge was fortunately empty, allowing Gadson to collapse into the nearest chair with a heavy sigh. He rubbed his eyes and squinted over at DiNozzo before groaning and checking his watch. "What're we doing here at zero-three?"

"Don't you usually work the night shift? This should be your noon." DiNozzo's words were met with incoherent mumblings by Gadson. Taking that as an indication that he wouldn't be getting a real answer to the question—which wasn't really a real question in the first place—DiNozzo decided to get right to it. "The explosion yesterday morning. You were in the infirmary. Dr. Mox said you radioed her about Captain Mehler's kid."

"Huh?" Gadson murmured. "Oh. Yeah. The skipper's kid." He groaned again and rubbed his face to try to wake himself. DiNozzo was ready to smack the kid; it would probably be a better wakeup call than the face rubbing. "Yeah, the skipper's kid."

DiNozzo waited for him to elaborate and got nothing. This was going to be even harder than he thought. "So did you _see_ Wyatt Mehler?"

"Who?"

"You're kidding, right?"

Gadson frowned and rubbed his face again. "Uh… What was the question?"

"Just how many pain pills have you taken?"

"You asked me that?"

DiNozzo had a new-found sense of sympathy for anyone who had to be around him when he was on pain meds; if he was half as bad as this kid, he couldn't figure out how Ziva hadn't killed him years before. "Okay," he said slowly. "Let's start from the top. Wyatt Mehler. That's the skipper's five-year-old kid. You following so far?"

"I think so."

"Good. You called Dr. Mox to tell her that Wyatt was waiting for her in her office."

"Yes. I did that."

"Okay. Good." He had now gotten as far as he was when he talked to Dr. Mox in the ICU the evening before. "So, did you see Wyatt?"

"No."

Again, DiNozzo waited for an elaboration that he didn't get. "No?" he finally echoed.

"Nope."

"So, how did you know Wyatt was there?"

"Oh. Yeah. That." Again with the face rubbing. "So, we got a call in the ICU from the skipper. Captain Mehler. He said his son tripped over an ankle-breaker and hit his knee pretty hard. Wanted to talk to Dr. Mox, but she had already left for the morning."

"Then what?"

Gadson shrugged. "Then I called Dr. Mox."

"Without seeing the kid?"

A shake of the head from the corpsman. "No. I wanted to call her before she went to sleep. I hate having to wake up the docs." Well, that was a good point. "Besides," Gadson continued, "my shift ended almost an hour before. I wanted to get going to sleep, too." And there it was.

"Okay," DiNozzo said with a sigh. "What did Captain Mehler say?"

"When?"

"Seriously, Corpsman, how many pills did you take?"

"Uh—"

"Forget it. What did the skipper say when you told him that Dr. Mox was back in her quarters?"

"Oh. Right. Uh, he said that was fine, he'd just wait with his son in Dr. Mox's office."

And there they had it: the reason why DiNozzo had to actually speak to HM2 Gadson instead of just Dr. Mox. "You're sure he said that?"

"Said what?"

This was painful. DiNozzo was going to have to have a word with whoever prescribed Gadson's pain meds. "Captain Mehler," he said slowly. "You're sure he said that he'd wait _with_ his son in Dr. Mox's office?"

"Yes." And that might have been the most definitive thing Gadson had said throughout the entire interview. "He said he'd wait with his kid."

"Not that his kid would be waiting, but that he'd be waiting _with him_?"

"Right."

"As in, the skipper and his kid _both_ would be in Dr. Mox's office?"

"Right."

DiNozzo was going to repeat the question, but couldn't think of another way to ask it. He was pretty sure it wouldn't make a difference; Gadson was pretty confident when he repeated what Captain Mehler had said.

The problem was, DiNozzo had spent half an hour talking to Captain Mehler the day before, and in all of his worries about his son, the captain never once mentioned the fact that he had been with his son when the bomb exploded and the kid went missing. DiNozzo didn't have children, but he was pretty sure that that wasn't something a parent would easily forget.

* * *

Ziva David was pretty sure Avrum Dardik never slept. Not only had they talked late the night before, but now early in the morning, he answered on the first ring and would undoubtedly have information that he spent the night collecting. It was no different when they weren't on an active operation, except that instead of staying awake working, he stayed awake playing computer games with people all over the world.

Ziva briefly wondered if McGee was in his gaming group, then realized it had nothing to do with why she called, and got down to business. "What have you found out, Avrum?" she asked directly.

_"I have been monitoring the press,"_ the analyst replied, not affected by her tone or the hour in the least. _"I wrote a program that analyzed major news networks for key words and phrases—"_

"Avrum."

_"The news of the bomb on the ship has gone all around the world_," he continued. _"Many different press outlets are reporting different things. Most of the news is from the United States media outlets, for obvious reasons, with varying conjecture as far as the size of the bomb, who is behind it, why it would be set—"_

"Anyone appear to know more than they should about it?"

There were a few beats of silence on the other end of the call. _"I do not know what people should or should not know,"_ he finally admitted. Ziva sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Details that are unusually specific," she began. "Claims to sources that others have not known to speak to. Along those lines."

_"Oh. No, I do not think anything falls into those categories. There is only one brief mention in the American press of the presence of a group of Israelis on board. No conjecture in that article as far as the involvement of the Israelis. There is much more mention in _Haaretz_ and _Israel HaYom_."_ Ziva was hardly surprised about that; Israeli newspapers would be much more likely to report the presence of an Israeli training mission on an attacked American aircraft carrier than anyone else.

"What did the articles from _Haaretz_ and _Israel HaYom_ report?"

_"I can email you the full articles."_

"Do that," she replied. She'd read them on the phone. "Who were the reporters' sources?"

_"Nobody suspicious," _Dardik assured her. _"It was the public affairs office for the navy."_

So, generic information that told her nothing. "Anything as far as who knew about the mission before the _Truman_ was attacked?"

_"There was a brief article in a smaller political paper out of Tel Aviv, but lacked any specifics. There was also mention on _Al Jazeera_'s website."_ Again, no surprise there. They always seemed to know a little bit about everything.

"Did you check WikiLeaks?" Ziva asked, only half joking. Apparently, that was the half that Avrum didn't get.

_"I do not think the issue could be construed as embarrassing enough for WikiLeaks,"_ he replied. She sighed and didn't bother explaining herself further. _"I have also been monitoring the NCIS lab here—"_

"Avrum, I have asked you to stop doing that," Ziva said with another sigh. She really didn't want to think about Tony's reaction when he found out that his forensics lab had been bugged since Mossad began renting office space on base.

_"So that means you do not want to know what I have found out?"_ He sounded honestly sincere in the question, enough to make Ziva take pity on him.

"Tell me what you have," she said, "and then stop monitoring the NCIS offices."

_"All of them?"_

"Avrum!" She took a deep breath; seriously, it was like working with a child. "Yes, all of them." Her marriage probably wouldn't last long if Tony found out that her people were spying on his people. "Now, what do you have?"

_"The explosive material is a combination of RDX and PETN—"_

"Semtex?" Ziva interrupted, a sinking feeling in her gut. She was quite familiar with the plastic explosive; it was very popular all over the Middle East, but especially by terrorists. It wasn't too hard to make and wasn't too easy to detect.

_"Semtex is a trade name,"_ Dardik reminded her. _"The composition of the explosive detected does not exactly match the composition of any of Semtex's—"_

"Yes, Avrum," Ziva interrupted. She made a mental note to never get in a conversation with him about Kleenex or Xerox machines. "If it does not match any of the formulas of Semtex, what does it match?"

There was another pause on the other end of the phone, which made Ziva wonder if she had somehow stated the question incorrectly. She repeated it in her head and decided that there was really no better way to ask. Fortunately, Dardik answered before she had to think of one. _"Nothing,"_ he informed her. _"It does not match anything in our database, nor anybody else's database. We are dealing with someone new."_


	14. Chapter 14

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 14**

* * *

DiNozzo was getting too old for this job. Even after three cups of coffee—the one from the ICU and two much larger ones from the mess hall—he still felt worn down, and knew from the glimpse he caught of himself in the mirror that his face matched. Freiler and Gabi, on the other hand, were both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed—he was glad he didn't have to try to explain that one to Ziva—and without the benefit of caffeine in Freiler's case.

He had no idea how Gibbs still did it. Then again, by now, the man was more coffee and bourbon than flesh and blood.

DiNozzo had gathered the team together in a corner table in the mess hall, which was just beginning to serve breakfast. He was about to get started with the campfire—which would probably be the last before Gibbs arrived in a few hours—when Ziva slid into the seat next to him. "Sorry," she greeted, not bothering to explain why she was a few minutes late.

"No problem, Sweetcheeks," DiNozzo replied. He frowned as he tried to figure out how to word the news he had received from Dr. Pitt after his chat with HM2 Gadson. Of course, he was talking to Ziva, so the direct approach would probably be best. "The divers pulled two bodies from the water," he said. "One was Seaman Gabe Kemper. The other was Midshipman Michael Spivak."

Gabi muttered something that DiNozzo didn't quite catch, his attention still focused on his wife. For a long second, she didn't react, her expression remaining perfectly composed, like it always was when she was receiving bad news. "I see," she finally said, that façade not changing. "I will have to speak with my director to see how Israel would like to pursue prosecution of the perpetrator."

"What?" Gabi asked, her eyes wide with surprise. DiNozzo stepped in before an argument could erupt between the two women.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," he said, shooting his senior field agent a warning look. "We still need to find the perpetrator. Then we can let our respective governments duke it out for punishment rights."

"I think _twelve_ Americans dead and an attack on an _American_ aircraft carrier trumps _one_ Israeli death," Gabi continued heatedly.

"Israel does not take the deaths of servicemembers lightly," Ziva shot back.

"Neither do we!"

"Stop it, both of you," DiNozzo ordered harshly. He didn't like snapping at his coworkers—especially when one had as much power to make his life miserable as Ziva did—but they were starting to get looks from the sailors and Marines and dependents who had appeared for breakfast, and that was not the kind of attention they, or NCIS in general, needed at the moment.

Sure enough, Ziva turned her glare on him, and he could tell from the corner of his eye that Gabi had done the same. There was a sharp intake of breath from Freiler, who didn't like confrontation at all. "You're arguing about something that's not even our call, but won't be _anybody's_ call if we can't get our acts together and catch this guy. There's not enough room on this boat for a turf war." There was a long moment of silence before Tony decided it was time to move on. "Freiler," he said, turning to the one person who hadn't given him problems yet that morning, "what did you get from forensics?"

"The GC/MS finished with the explosive material," he said. He glanced down at the notes he had probably jotted down while on the phone with their lab. "Uh, the material was Semtex—"

"Actually, Semtex is a trade name. The explosive does not match their formulas," Ziva interrupted without thinking. Her eyes widened slightly as she comprehended what she had just said and what that had revealed. Tony's eyes, in turn, narrowed just as much as hers had widened.

"How do you know what the explosive material is?" he demanded. Ziva's face adopted that defensive expression he knew a bit too well, the one that said she knew that she had done something wrong but was going to try to explain it away anyway.

"I spoke with Avrum this morning—"

"And how does your analyst know what my lab found?"

Ziva's lips tightened slightly and she couldn't quite meet his eye, two red flags that told him he wasn't going to like what she was going to say. "The lab was monitored," she finally admitted. He knew his surprise was evident on his face when she quickly continued, "It has been that way since before we arrived."

"Your team has been spying on my lab?" he asked slowly.

"Actually, not only the lab."

"Just how much of NCIS's operation is Mossad aware of?"

There was another ominous pause. "All of it," Ziva finally said.

"_All_ of it?" he echoed. "The office?"

"Yes."

"Conference room?"

"Yes."

"_Interrogation?_"

"Yes."

"What the hell, Ziva?"

"Uh, do you need us to leave?" Freiler asked timidly. They both ignored him.

"When were you planning on telling me?" Tony demanded.

"I was hoping I would not have to," Ziva admitted.

"_What?_"

"I told Avrum to stop all monitoring," she said.

"And how long have you known about it?"

"I found out shortly after I took over in the office."

"And you didn't think you needed to tell me?"

"Uh, Tony, Ziva, I think Gabi and I are going to go—"

"_Sit,_" both of the newlyweds demanded. They continued to stare at each other in a silent detente.

"I did not tell you, because I told Avrum to remove all bugs," Ziva finally said. "I did not realize until this morning that he did not do so."

"So you're telling me that you told him to stop before, and he ignored you," he summarized. "So now why should I believe that he's going to do it now?"

"Believe me, Tony, he will," Ziva said emphatically. "I will see to it myself."

He didn't respond to that, instead turning to his junior field agent. "Freiler," he barked, only realizing after seeing the younger man jump just how harsh that was. He toned it down before continuing. "The lab results."

"Uh, right," Freiler said nervously. He cleared his throat slightly. "Uh, just like Officer David—Ziva—said, the explosive is a mixture of RDX and PETN, but it isn't really Semtex. Uh, the manufacturer has set formulations, depending on what the explosive is for; Semtex 1A is for blasting, 2P is a booster—"

"Freiler."

"Right. The point. Uh, the explosive doesn't match any of their formulations exactly, but it's closest to Semtex 1A. The lab's comparing it to the database of known bomb makers, because explosives formulations are practically as individualized as a fingerprint—"

"It does not match anybody in the database," Ziva interrupted quietly. Tony took a deep breath.

"Okay," he said after a pause. "Abby will re-run the tests when she gets here, but in the meantime, Gabi, you still have contacts with Interpol, right?"

"I've only been away from my old job for a month, Tony. Even Interpol agents have longer memories than that."

"Okay. Send the results to them and go ahead and forward it to your people at the FBI as well. If it's not in Mossad's database, it's probably not going to be in anybody else's, but better safe than sorry. Freiler, anything else from the lab?"

"Uh, nothing yet. They're working on DNA and fingerprints, but with the fire and the fire suppressants, there's really not much left. They're not too optimistic."

"Again, let's hope that it's something Abby can work her magic on when she gets here in," he checked his watch, "nine hours. Gabi. What'd you get from the guys at the nuclear reactor?"

"Not much," the senior field agent admitted. "Midshipman Spivak was a hard worker, got along with everyone in the section, always eager to learn more, etc, etc."

"Well, I think we can safely scratch his name from the list of potential bombers," DiNozzo commented with a sigh. "Unless he's just really bad at it, in which case, he scratched himself from the list."

"Tony," Ziva protested, her voice quiet.

"Sorry, Sweetcheeks." And he really was sorry. Not so much for the fight about Dardik monitoring his offices—seriously, did Mossad even know the definition of the word 'boundaries'?—but for the entire case, for her having to be involved at all, for the Israelis on board, for Spivak's death, for suspecting the kid in the first place. He would apologize for all the bad things in the world if he could.

But he couldn't, so that left him with the only thing he knew how to do: finding out who was behind this latest batch of badness and making sure he was punished. "I talked to the corpsman who told Dr. Mox that Wyatt Mehler was in her office," he began. "The corpsman never actually laid eyes on the kid. Got a call from Captain Mehler that the kid tripped over an ankle breaker and hit his knee and that they were waiting for Mox in her office."

"That's odd," Freiler commented with a frown. "I didn't think Dr. Mox's office was hit all that hard."

"That's not what's odd about it," Gabi countered before DiNozzo could say anything. She turned to her supervisory agent. "The corpsman said that Captain Mehler was waiting with his son?"

"He was adamant about that," DiNozzo said with a nod. He was glad he wasn't the only one who found that a bit suspicious.

"But you talked to Captain Mehler," Gabi continued, frowning. "Did he say anything about being with his son when the bomb went off?"

"Not a word," DiNozzo confirmed. Silence fell over the group.

"So he's hiding something," Gabi finally said.

"That's what I've been trying to figure out," Tony replied with a nod. He turned to his junior field agent. "Freiler, get everything you can on Captain Mehler, no matter how small it seems." They never really knew what people think of as important; just a few weeks ago, they found out that Marine pilot had sabotaged one of his fellow pilot's fighter and struck a deal with the Iranians just because he needed the money to get his cousin out of gambling debt. He turned to his senior field agent. "And Gabi, I want you to go talk to him. See what kind of story he's giving you about where both he and his son were when the bomb went off."

"How do you want me to play it?" Gabi asked him.

"How about, 'I'm new and my boss is making me repeat everything he's done'?"

Gabi smiled at that. "I love that technique," she said, sounding a bit too eager for someone heading into an interrogation.

"That's a technique?" Freiler asked with a frown.

"Of course," Gabi said with a shrug. "You know," she said before adopting a tired and frustrated air, "'I'm sorry to bother you, sir, since you just talked to my boss yesterday, but I just joined this team and he doesn't trust me to do anything by myself yet. Never mind that I worked for the FBI for _five years_ and was considered one of the top investigators in my unit, but no, can't send the new girl to do anything that might be valuable. So I just have to go back and do everything he's already done. As if _that's_ going to give us a break in the case.'" She dropped the act and grinned. "Everyone's been there at some point in their careers, so they can sympathize. It really does work wonders."

"Oh," Freiler replied. He frowned before looking over at DiNozzo. "So what are we thinking? That Captain Mehler had something to do with blowing a hole in his own ship?"

"I'm not saying that," Tony replied. "I'm just saying that he's hiding something, and I intend to find out what it is."


	15. Chapter 15

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 15**

* * *

The closer the plane got to Bahrain, the more Abby Sciuto wondered what she was doing on it and why she let Gibbs talk her into this. The fact that Gibbs didn't even have to try to talk her into it wasn't really helping much.

She was a forensic scientist, nothing more and nothing less. She solved crimes by sitting—actually, she was usually standing, but that didn't sound as emphatic in her head—in her lab, comparing fingerprints and extracting DNA and purifying samples for Major Mass Spec. She wasn't Gibbs, or Tony or Ziva or McGee, who solved crimes by going out into the real world and chasing down the bad guy and threatening them with guns until they came back to NCIS and sat in Interrogation and told everything the team needed to know.

People who did their work in a lab usually didn't have to fly across the world to do it.

She had nothing against flying; ever since she graduated from school and took the job at NCIS, she had had to fly back to Louisiana every time she wanted to see her family, and that didn't bother her at all. Well, her family sometimes did, but everyone's family had a few of those people, right? The point was, she knew the statistics, and while airplane crashes made the news, it was, by far, a much safer way of travel than driving a car, and she did that every day. Of course, neither of those was even close to being as safe as riding in an elevator, as long as you limited it to the few minutes a day that the average person rode in an elevator. If you started spending hours in one, all bets were off.

She wondered sometimes if she should cut back on the caffeine, especially while in a foreign country. Or traveling to a foreign country on a plane. She wondered if Bahrain had Caff-Pow.

Her mind hadn't had much time to wander further than that when the plane touched down in Bahrain. Gibbs, who had slept the entire Frankfurt to Bahrain leg of the trip, awoke just as the plane began taxiing toward the gate, looking immediately alert and ready to go, although he'd probably still be getting at least one coffee in him before getting started on the _Truman_. Abby hoped that wouldn't be too much to keep him from getting any sleep that night. With a frown, she realized she didn't know when 'night' was supposed to be; they had crossed so many time zones since their original plane took off from Dulles that she had no clue when it was. Oh, well. If it was important, someone would tell them later.

Their passage through customs went quickly enough, and just on the other side of security, they were met by a very young and very nervous looking guy in an NCIS tee-shirt. "Agent Gibbs and Ms. Sciuto?" he asked as they approached. He frowned slightly as he took in Abby's tattoos and outfit, but didn't say anything, returning his attention to Gibbs. "Agent DiNozzo asked me to drive you to base, and then there's a helicopter waiting to take you to the _Truman._ I understand Ms. Sciuto will be staying at NCIS and working in the lab?"

"Mm-hmm," Gibbs replied. The kid looked like he was looking for more explanation, and finally realized when Gibbs grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder and began walking away that he wasn't going to get it. He started to rush after Gibbs, then seemed to realize that he was supposed to be a gentleman a few seconds later, returning to help Abby with her bag.

"Have you been to Bahrain before, sir?" the kid asked as he pulled the car away from the Bahrain airport.

"Once," was all Gibbs said in reply. He didn't offer any further explanation, and the kid was smart enough not to ask for one. They rode the rest of the way to base in silence.

Nobody spoke again until the kid—Abby decided she should probably stop calling him that; he was probably a 25-year-old intelligence analyst who just drew the short straw and had to leave the office to pick them up—stopped the car in front of the NCIS building. "Here we go," he said awkwardly. "We need to get you both temporary badges for the building—"

"Don't think we have time for that," Gibbs interrupted.

"Well, you're probably not going to get far without them, at least not around the building," the analyst replied. "All the doors have electronic locks. It should only take a few minutes."

"Planning on spending most of my time on the _Truman_," Gibbs replied.

"Agent DiNozzo said you'd say that," the analyst admitted. "He told me to tell you to stop complaining and that you're wasting more time than it takes to get the badges." The kid—analyst—blushed. "His words, not mine, sir."

Gibbs glowered. "He sure is getting bossy for someone who couldn't use a stapler that doesn't have Mighty Mouse on it three months ago," he grumbled. The analyst, wisely enough, remained silent as he led them to the Security office for their temporary badges. True to his word, it was only a few minutes later that they had their badges and were ready to get started.

The first stop was also Abby's last: the lab, which stood in stark contrast to Abby's own domain. Everything was white and chrome, shiny and sterile, with no artwork, no music in the background, no character. There were three people in the large space, all as sterile and unremarkable as the rest of the room in their white lab coats, and Abby knew that this whole experience would be a hardship tour.

The three stopped their actions and conversations as the three newcomers entered, and for a few long seconds, all six just stood there and stared at each other. "You must be from HQ," one of the Bahrain lab workers finally said, taking a step forward. "Moe Greene. Welcome to my lab. This is Pat Harris and Sarah Berry."

"Abby Sciuto," Abby introduced, shaking their hands. Might as well be nice; she was going to have to be working with them for the foreseeable future. It was, after all, their turf.

"I read your article on the use of the GC/MS on hair samples and the comparisons to blood and urine levels," Sarah replied. "Has it been validated?"

"Validated, yes," Abby replied. "Used in court, not yet. But there's nothing wrong with the science. Believe me."

"Too bad we don't have more scientists serving as judges," Moe commented. "It would make our lives a lot easier. Lot less explaining to do."

"No kidding," Sarah agreed with an emphatic nod.

"What've you got on the case?" Gibbs asked, interjecting into their conversation and not being timid about it. Which was perfectly Gibbs; he wasn't timid about anything.

"Well, we have analysis of the explosives," Moe replied, now looking directly at the supervisory field agent. "Agent Freiler collected samples from the scene. It's a mix of RDX and PETN, along with some other non-explosive material for binding and cohesion. The trade name's Semtex, but the relative quantities of each explosive don't fit any of their formulations." He glanced over at a computer before turning back to Gibbs. "We ran a check against our database, which is linked to the Interpol database, and haven't gotten a hit."

"New bomber?" Gibbs asked. Moe just shrugged.

"No idea," he replied. "Just about the only person we can rule out at this point is Osama bin Laden." No reaction from the crowd. "You know, the similarities to the _U.S.S. Cole_, except for the fact that bin Laden's now dead? No? Nothing?" He shrugged and continued. "As far as other forensics from the scene, the majority of attempted fingerprint collections are too degraded to make heads or tails out of anything, but we're still searching." He shrugged again. "I'm sure there's a smoking gun—metaphorically, of course—in here somewhere, but it's not really smoking much. More of a smoldering. We're still looking for it, but it's not exactly making itself obvious."

"Abby," Gibbs directly.

"Help them out. Got it, Gibbs," she replied automatically, before turning back to the lab's three employees. "No offense." Moe just shrugged again; Sarah and Pat didn't really react much at all.

"Repeat the explosives analysis," Gibbs continued. "Find out why it doesn't match anything in the database. Find me something I can use." And before she could say anything to that, he had ducked out of the room, the junior analyst who was escorting them around base closely in tow.

"Well, that was perfectly clear," Abby muttered to herself. She turned to find the other three scientists all looking back at her, and managed a tight smile. "So," she said. "Where can I work?"


	16. Chapter 16

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 16**

_A/N: Sixteen chapters already? Time flies when you're killing yourself with school (which is, fortunately, almost done...again). I guess it's about time to start making theories and tracking down leads, isn't it? For those of you still out there, is there anything you want to see or ideas you want explored? Just curious._

* * *

A helicopter was waiting to take Gibbs to the _U.S.S. Truman_, and after the incredibly short ride—he had seen the aircraft carrier from the helicopter landing pad on base, it was that close—Gibbs found himself face-to-face with a former senior field agent on the flight deck of a carrier, a scene that was so familiar from so many years ago that he was almost surprised to see which senior field agent it was in front of him. He wondered how long it would be before he stopped seeing Stan Burley in places it once made sense for the late special agent to be.

"DiNozzo," Gibbs greeted, offering his hand.

"Gibbs," DiNozzo replied, shaking it. "Good flight?"

"Not bad."

"Good." DiNozzo led him inside, off the flight deck and into an area that was quiet enough that they could speak without yelling. "So," the former senior field agent said, "welcome to the _Truman_. You want coffee?" DiNozzo chuckled before Gibbs had the opportunity to respond. "Of course you do. Let's hit the mess hall." And DiNozzo was off before Gibbs could protest that they didn't have time for detours to the ship's mess hall, leaving the newly arrived special agent with little choice but to follow.

The coffee was almost decent, for carrier coffee, but most importantly, DiNozzo got down to work as soon as they were seated in a corner of the almost-deserted mess hall. "You'd think it should be dinner about now, but it's not," DiNozzo explained. "The ship's on Zulu time, even though Bahrain is right outside the window."

"They're called portholes on a ship, DiNozzo."

The former senior field agent shrugged. "Serve the same purpose," he replied. He took a sip of his sugared coffee. "The bomb went off right around 0900 yesterday morning, ship's time," he began. "Explosive material is—"

"Generic Semtex," Gibbs finished for him.

"So you already talked to the lab people," DiNozzo commented with a knowing nod. He didn't seem surprised, or bothered, by that, so Gibbs didn't bother to explain. Instead of speaking, he took another sip of the subpar coffee. DiNozzo did the same before continuing. "My senior field agent's new to us from the FBI. She's checking with her contacts in the Bureau and Interpol to see if the explosive signature matches anyone we know." The new special agent in charge rubbed his eyes tiredly before continuing. "Ziva's been dealing with the Israeli midshipmen and their training officers. The missing midshipman was found this morning."

"Found alive?"

"Nope." DiNozzo sighed. "Pretty sure that's a dead end. No pun intended. They're all type-A, high-achieving control freaks. _Israeli_ type-A, high-achieving control freaks, but, you know."

"Sounds like someone we know."

"Yeah," DiNozzo agreed with a short laugh. He glanced around the mess hall. "But I wasn't the one who said it."

"Usually takes longer than two weeks for the husband to be completely demoralized, DiNozzo."

"That happened a lot longer than two weeks ago, Boss, and you know it," the former senior field agent replied without missing a beat. He gave a quick smile before returning to his report. "Nothing suspicious with any of the Israeli midshipmen, like I was saying. Midshipman Spivak was the most exciting of the bunch—only one with a disciplinary record, and he worked in the nuclear reactor. But his disciplinary record was for chasing women and he never actually had any contact with anything that would make anyone glow in the dark. And, well..." His voice trailed off as he shrugged.

"What about the kid?"

DiNozzo nodded again as he took another drink from his coffee cup. "Wyatt Mehler, Captain Barry Mehler's five-year-old son. Parents are divorced, kid usually lives with Mom in Norfolk. It's probably Mehler's last cruise as CO, asked his ex-wife to bring the kid to Bahrain for the Family Weekend, ex-wife agreed. She stayed on base in Bahrain, Wyatt came aboard the _Truman_."

"How's the ex-wife?"

"Not good," DiNozzo replied. Gibbs nodded knowingly. "One of my analysts wants to be a field agent someday. I have her baby-sitting the ex-wife." He took another drink of his coffee. "Something's off about the skipper, Boss. I talked to him for half an hour yesterday morning after the attack, and all he could focus on was finding his kid."

"Not that unusual, DiNozzo."

DiNozzo glowered briefly. "Figured that out myself, Boss, thanks. What's off is that shortly before the attack, the kid supposedly tripped over an ankle-breaker and smacked his knee pretty hard. Dr. Mox, Cunningham's friend, is a pediatrician and one of the ICU docs. A corpsman got a call in the ICU from Captain Mehler, who said that he was waiting for Dr. Mox in her office."

"So?"

"So Dr. Mox was on her way to her office when the bomb went off. It was a few sections away and two decks down from where she stood. Force was enough to knock her into the bulkhead and break her arm in the fall, but nothing in her office was damaged."

"I'm not getting the point, DiNozzo."

"That's 'cause you didn't let me finish, Boss. Not only would it be fairly impossible for the kid to go missing if he was in Mox's office, but in the half hour that I talked to the skipper, he didn't once mention the fact that he was with his son when the bomb went off and lost him from there."

"That's not something someone would forget." Especially a parent.

"Exactly. He also neglected to mention the fact that he was in Dr. Mox's office."

Gibbs frowned. "You suspect the skipper of something?"

"Yes, but exactly what, I'm not sure," DiNozzo replied. "Gabi Stone, my senior field agent, is chatting with him now."

"His office?"

"Yup."

"Repeating everything the boss does?"

DiNozzo smiled. "You got it, Boss."

"Not your boss anymore, DiNozzo. Don't know how many times I have to tell you that."

"Force of habit, Gibbs." He didn't need to be told; even two decades after Mike Franks left NCIS, Gibbs occasionally referred to his old friend by the same title.

They lapsed into companionable silence—something Gibbs wouldn't have thought was in DiNozzo's vocabulary a few months before—and Gibbs felt like he knew enough to get started on the case. He also felt like he knew enough to know that DiNozzo was handling it just fine without his help. "How's Ziva?"

DiNozzo chuckled slightly as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips, and Gibbs didn't miss the way his former senior field agent's left thumb twisted the band he now wore on that hand. "Well, she hasn't killed me yet," he replied.

"Always a good sign."

"Then again, she could just be waiting to unpack the right weapon from the stuff that was just delivered yesterday."

"That's a possibility."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Gibbs." DiNozzo took another sip of coffee. "How's the McGoo?"

"Got a girlfriend."

"The pilot?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Huh. Good for him." DiNozzo shrugged. "Must not be a very hard working senior field agent if he has time to date."

"Seem to remember you dating."

"Yeah. Someone I saw for fourteen hours a day at work."

"Seem to remember a rule against that."

"Seem to remember you telling us to keep it out of the office."

"Seem to remember more than a few times you didn't."

"And yet neither of us ended up on a garbage barge in the Arctic, so I'm guessing you didn't really mind as much as you claimed."

"I can talk to Vance and still make that happen, if that's what you want."

"I think I'll pass, thanks," DiNozzo replied with a chuckle. "So you were on vacation when I called? I didn't know you went on vacations. Retirements to Mexico, sure, but not real vacations."

Gibbs didn't rise to the bait and just answered the unasked question. "Went sailing down in Virginia Beach."

"Gracy and the kids?"

And then Gibbs decided that story time was over. He drained the rest of his coffee and stood from his chair. "Time to find the rest of your team. Maybe they have something that'll help solve the case."


	17. Chapter 17

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 17**

* * *

Even though they were on vacation—using a very loose definition of the term—both Kanten and Kim Tomblin woke up at an hour that most people would consider early to head out for their run. They went directly for the country roads, ignoring the dirt track that served as Kim's usual running path when she visited the family orchard.

They ran the first mile of what, judging by their general direction, could be the beginning of a five, seven, or ten mile run, without speaking, just falling into an easy rhythm that was enough to ward off the November frost without winding either sibling. It wasn't until they passed a road that would lead to their nearest neighbor's house that Kim finally broke the silence. "Why'd you do it?"

Kanten wasn't nearly ignorant enough to not know what she was talking about. "Which part?" he asked bitterly. "Cheating on Suki, or telling her that I did?"

"Let's go in chronological order."

The eldest Tomblin took a deep breath before letting it out in a rush, his eyes fixed on the pavement that was quickly falling under harsh footsteps. "I don't think I really know," he finally said. "Suki… Sometimes I can't remember a time she wasn't in my life."

"I can," Kim replied. "It was before you met her when you were twenty-four."

"You're a real smartass, you know that?" Kanten asked in reply. "Yeah. We met when I was twenty-four and were married eight months later. Who does that?" Kim knew he didn't really want an answer to the question. "I fell in love with Suki fast and fell hard. She was my best friend and I never questioned how or why we got to married so quickly."

"So what happened?"

"Nothing, everything, I don't know." He paused to collect his thoughts. "There's a lot about being married that you don't understand."

"Okay, if this is going to turn into a lecture about living with Jeff without being married, all I have to say is that I don't need a fucking lecture about morals from a guy who made a habit out of cheating on his wife while deployed."

"I wasn't going to say that," he said defensively. "I wasn't going to say anything about Cunningham. Believe it or not, Kim, not everything is about you." She felt her face burn with anger at the comment, but didn't say anything. He eventually went back to his story. "We were married, we were happy, whatever, I didn't question anything. Reiko was born, then Osama bin Laden came up with the fucking brilliant plan of flying a couple planes into the World Trade Center, and suddenly I was a fucking combat helicopter pilot with an actual combat mission." Kim remembered this part, remembered how her brothers had gone to Afghanistan while she was still in college, remembered hearing about how many helicopters were going down and remembered being constantly worried about the brother nobody ever felt any need to ever worry about.

"You know that feeling when a mission goes right, and adrenaline is pumping, and nothing can possibly bring you back to earth?" he asked, and she did know that feeling. It was strange; Kanten was the brother she had never gotten along with, had always thought was so different from her, and now she was hearing that they reacted to combat in exactly the same way. She could remember that feeling from when she was in the Corps, could remember experiencing similar feelings after the action of a dangerous case with NCIS, and she knew exactly where this story was going, because she had been there.

They passed an intersecting road without turning, telling Kim that this wasn't the five mile run they were on. Her money was on seven; Kanten wasn't as young as he once was, and probably didn't have a ten mile run in the cold in him. "That's when it happened," he continued. "I landed safely on base after flying a rescue mission through a sandstorm that nobody else wanted to fly through, because I was some fucking cocky captain who thought he could do it all, and honestly, I'm still surprised I didn't fly into the side of some fucking mountain." This was another story Kim know; it ended with Kanten earning a distinguished flying cross and solidifying, in his own mind, his superiority over everyone else. "And there I was, on top of the world and looking for someone to share it with. Suki wasn't there, but that maintenance sergeant was, and, well, that's what happened." He let out a breath through his lips. "And what's really fucked up is that I didn't feel guilty about it all."

"How the fuck did Karsten let you get away with that?"

"He wasn't there," Kanten replied, looking over at his sister with confusion on his face. "He was in South Korea." That's right; Kim always forgot that there were two years when the twins weren't stationed together, when Kanten was in Japan and deployed to Afghanistan and Karsten was in South Korea and not deployed. "But then the next fucking time, I remembered how I had gotten away with it the first time, and, well, shit happens."

"So when'd you start to feel guilty?"

He thought about the question for a few minutes as they continued to run, running past the road where they would turn for the ten mile run, confirming that they were doing the seven. Unless they were doing something completely different, which didn't fit into Kanten's character at all. He, like all pilots, was a creature of habit. "I don't know," he finally said. "I was home after this last deployment and playing video games with Denji, and I realized how much of a bastard I'd been for my son's entire life." He gave a bitter chuckle. "The kid's never had a father who didn't cheat on his mother. How fucked up is that? I think what really got me, though, is that this is the only thing I had ever kept from Suki. Ever. I had told her every other fucking thing that happened in the years we were married. And so I told her."

"And she told you to get out."

"No," he replied, surprising her. "Isn't that a fucking bitch? She would have had every right to tell me to get out of her sight, but she didn't. She didn't really say anything. I don't know if it's her or a Japanese thing—"

"Okay, can you imagine Mom letting Dad get away with, well, with what you did?"

"I said Japanese thing, Kim. Mom is a hundred percent American. She just happens to have slanty eyes." He did have a point. "I mean raised in Japan Japanese. Culturally worlds away from us half-breeds who grew up speaking English and listening to our grandfathers talk about killing Japs." They lapsed into silence again. "That went on for about two weeks before I couldn't take it anymore. I felt so fucking guilty for what I had done that I couldn't see how I could live with Suki anymore. I tried to convince myself that it'll be best for the kids if I stay, but I just couldn't do it. And I think she was relieved when I told her, because it meant she was allowed to be angry about it."

"So what now?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "Fuck if I know," he replied. "I can't think further than the next day ahead, and most of the time it's Karsten who's doing the thinking for me." Feet continued to pound on asphalt as they continued their run. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"What happens now?"

"With the case or with life?"

He shrugged again. "Whatever."

Kim sighed. She'd been trying to figure that out for the last few months, but like Kanten, most of the time she couldn't focus on anything further in the future than the next few days. With Jeff still recovering from his injuries and her still trying to figure out her new job, everything changed over the course of a few days anyway. "I'm going to give the new SAC over in Bahrain a call as soon as we get in, see where they are on the case and if they still need me."

"What do they think you can do that they can't?"

"Fuck if I know," she said bitterly. It seemed they were calling in agents from around the world, with Gibbs heading over as well. She had lived on an aircraft carrier for a year; she knew it wasn't big enough for the entire Bahrain team plus her and Gibbs and whoever else they were calling. "It's not as if I have a list of terrorists who make a habit of bombing American ships in my head."

"Far as I know, there was only one in the list, and I'm pretty sure you can't blame this on Osama bin Laden."

"No joke."

"Unless the conspiracy theorists are right, and bin Laden's still alive."

"Trust me. They're wrong."

"First-hand knowledge?"

She snorted. "That was a SEAL and CIA mission, and you know it." She was honest when she said it was a SEAL and CIA mission, less than honest when she implied that she didn't have first-hand knowledge. She may not have been there when bin Laden was shot, but that didn't mean she didn't know more than the average American. She had been following the mysterious compound in Pakistan for almost a year before the mission, had been involved in some of the contingency planning, in the 'what if bin Laden's there?' talks. She had argued vehemently that if bin Laden was there and if he was killed in any sort of take-down mission, that they had to get rid of the body within twenty-four hours, that if they didn't preserve that aspect of Muslim culture, they would have a whole bunch of angry Muslims—including some_ armed_ angry Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan—who would be pissed at them for their disrespect.

Stan Burley argued just as vehemently that if they didn't keep the body, people wouldn't believe he was really dead. They were probably both right, but more people listened her than him. She teased him about the victory at the time. It seemed rather petty now, considering Stan ended up dead and she ended up transferred to San Diego.

They turned exactly when they should have for the seven-mile loop, two siblings running harder than they probably should have, both unwilling to let the other see any sort of weakness, both unwilling to show that they were now in their thirties and not as young as they used to be. "How'd you get so fucking good at this, Kim?" Kanten asked after almost a mile of neither speaking. "Sometimes I forget you're not you're not a little kid anymore."

"I never forget you're an ass."

His chuckle was closer to a wheeze, but he didn't slow his pace. "Cute."

"I try."

"You gonna be okay?"

"I know how to take care of myself, Kanten."

"Yeah," he said with a snort. "We've seen enough proof of that." They continued to pound the pavement. "It's not really what I… Who did this, Kim? Are we seeing a new public enemy number one rising and making himself known?"

"I don't know," she said honestly. She hadn't seen any indication of that, but every public enemy number one had to start somewhere. "But I really, really hope not."


	18. Chapter 18

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 18**

* * *

The NCIS agent afloat office aboard the _U.S.S. Harry S Truman_ was similar enough to other agent afloat offices that it was filled with emotions that Tony DiNozzo preferred not to deal with, emotions that followed a director dead, a partnership ended, a team broken up. Emotions that led to hard work on the job and hard liquor when the door to the sterile quarters that he called home for four months was closed. Guilt, sorrow, regret, longing, boredom, and a whole range of other feelings that didn't have names and wouldn't be admitted to even if they had.

God, DiNozzo had hated being an agent afloat, and being in the office of one reminded him far too much of that fact. He would have rather worked anywhere on the ship—flight line included—to avoid that office, but knew that doing so would result in questions he didn't want to deal with answering.

So he sat in the late Agent McCaw's agent afloat office and dealt with the emotions to avoid dealing with the questions. He wondered at what point in his life he got to stop dealing with whichever problem was deemed the lesser of the two evils present at the moment.

Gibbs was off doing whatever it was Gibbs did when he got himself caught up on a case—a decade of working with the man, and DiNozzo still wasn't sure how his thought processes worked—Freiler was cross-referencing the entire crew of the _Truman_ by explosives experience, in case this was an inside job; Gabi was following up with her contacts in the anti-terrorism world; and Ziva was doing whatever it was they did when Mossad officers were lying about spying on their allies and not bothering to justify why they did it.

DiNozzo sighed. Truth be told, he was neither all that surprised nor all that angry about the fact that Mossad had been spying on him, and on Stan Burley before him. Spying was what Mossad did, and they were good at it. He was more bothered by the fact that some bomber had the bad timing to set off an explosion during the first free weekend both he and Ziva had had since they got married—he didn't consider the four-day 'honeymoon' to Israel free time, because they spent almost as much time at Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv dealing with the marriage paperwork and background investigations, as if Mossad hadn't had a file on him since Ari Haswari went rogue, as at the beach—and he had wanted to spend that time arguing about how to unpack their house and making up from said arguments, not sitting on an aircraft carrier trying to figure out who would want to blow a hole in the side of the ship and where a five-year-old could have gone.

And why the father of that five-year-old would have omitted information to DiNozzo. He hoped Gabi would be bringing him that information soon.

Speak of the devil. No soon as the thought formed in his mind that his new senior field was rapping her knuckles against the open door to the agent afloat office. "You're a hard man to find, DiNozzo," she said lightly. "I figured you'd be in the mess, mainlining caffeine."

He nodded at the cup in her hand. "So that's the only reason you stopped by there, then. Looking for me."

"Of course," she replied with a smile, taking a seat in one of the office's empty chairs. "You ready to hear about my conversation with Captain Mehler?"

More than ever, DiNozzo was sure Gibbs had some sort of alarm system for when something case-related was about to be said; right on time, the silver-haired supervisory field agent from DC walked into the agent afloat office, his own cup of coffee in hand. "Right on time, Gibbs," DiNozzo acknowledged. He nodded over to the remaining chair. "Have a seat." Forgetting just how new to the office Gabi was and that she hadn't been around the last time Gibbs was in the time zone, he took a second to make introductions. "Gabi, meet Gibbs. Gibbs, my new senior field agent, Gabi Stone. She's the Saudi version of Tomblin."

"Yeah, we're practically the same person."

"You know Tomblin?" Gibbs asked.

"We were in the same FLETC class," Gabi explained. DiNozzo had heard the story already, but he didn't see the harm in letting Gabi tell it. She always seemed highly amused by the situation. "She was a first louie in the Corps and I had just left the Army." She smiled and shrugged a shoulder. "Who would have known that a tiny little twenty-four-year-old half-Japanese louie would be graduating at the top of the class?"

Gibbs was clearly not as amused by the story as Gabi was, but Gibbs was rarely amused by anything and Gabi was amused by everything, so that was no big surprise. "Where'd you graduate?" Gibbs asked.

"Somewhere near the middle," Gabi replied with another shrug. "I think I was enjoying being out of uniform for the first time since I was seventeen a little bit too much."

"Better than DiNozzo," Gibbs commented, nodding toward the special agent in question. "Bottom third. Spent too much time with the Bureau of Prisons girls."

"ATF," DiNozzo corrected. "No way I'd mess with a Bureau of Prisons girl."

"Just Mossad case officers," Gabi joked.

"Exactly. Just as intimidating as the Bureau of Prisons girls but without the, well, the Bureau of Prisons-ness. And even hotter than the ATF girls."

"And even more crazy," Gabi finished for him.

DiNozzo shrugged in acknowledgement and got back to business. "Captain Mehler," he said, directing the name at his senior field agent.

"Captain Mehler," she repeated. Before she had a chance to say anything else, there was another knock on the open door. "Oh, speak of the devil," Gabi said cheerfully, unknowingly echoing DiNozzo's words. "Hi, Ziva. We were just talking about you."

Ziva David frowned slightly at the comment but didn't say anything in response as she adjusted the small duffle bag on her shoulder. "Tony, may I talk to you?" She seemed to notice the other man in the room and gave a short nod. "Gibbs."

"Ziva."

"Good flight?"

"Not bad. Congratulations."

"We're still waiting for your wedding gift to arrive in the mail," DiNozzo joked as he got up from his chair. "We can talk in the hall," he said to his wife.

"You want us to continue?" Gabi asked.

"Yeah," he replied as he stepped out of the room. "Give Gibbs the story. You can fill me in on the good parts when we're done out here."

He closed the door behind him before turning back to his wife. "Hi," he said, giving her a quick kiss. "What's up?"

For a long minute, she didn't say anything, didn't meet his eye, as she smoothed the lines of the tee-shirt he had been wearing for two long days already. He knew her well enough to know that all of this—the interrupted free weekend, the explosion, the midshipmen, Spivak's death, even Avrum Dardik's disobedience of her orders to stop monitoring the NCIS offices—was bothering her. It was bothering him. So he just waited for her to say what it was she needed to say. "There is a boat that will be taking the midshipmen and their training officers to shore," she finally said.

"Boats are taking off now?" Tony asked with a frown. "I thought the divers—"

"It is a search and recovery mission now, Tony," Ziva interrupted. "At this point, there is no rescue. We all know this."

He did know it, but the fact that one of people they were still looking for was a five-year-old kid made him feel like the words had physically socked him in the gut, and he found he couldn't form the words to respond to them.

Not that she gave him much chance to response. "I am going back to base with the other Israelis."

He always had a few seconds of confusion whenever she said 'other Israelis', until he remembered that she was Israeli. All of the years of having her sitting across from him in DC and living in an apartment in Silver Spring tended to blur the memories of how they had first met and how she came to sit at that desk.

She interpreted—incorrectly—his silence as disapproval, and was quick to explain herself. "Midshipman Spivak will have to be escorted back to Israel, and to render honors—"

"I know," he interrupted.

"There is not much for me to do on board with the Israelis no longer on board, as I am here to investigate—"

"I know," he repeated. He gave her the best smile he could muster up. "At least one of us should have the chance to actually unpack our house."

"I will continue to work on the case and will be available if there is anything you need me to follow up on," Ziva was quick to say. "And this way we will not fight about how the house is unpacked," she added.

"Do I get to disagree about it when I come home?"

"Will it stop you if I say no?"

"Probably not."

That put a smile on Ziva's face, albeit a small one. She rose on her toes and kissed him. "I will miss you."

"Just as long as you show me how much when I return," he replied. The look that she gave him was enough to make him want to stowaway on her boat and return to land with her.

Unfortunately, this was a time for all work and no play. "I love you," he said instead of asking to let him go with her.

"I love you, too. I will call you when we are done today." She looked past him to the closed door and nodded at it. "You should get back in there," she said. "You know what happens when you keep Gibbs waiting."

"I still have nightmares about it," he joked. "See you in a few days." She nodded and turned to walk away, toward the boat that was taking her back to the house they were supposed to be turning into a home, leaving him in a narrow, sterile, and far too dark corridor of a giant aircraft carrier to figure out who had blown a hole in the side of it and what had happened to a five-year-old boy who was supposed to be enjoying time spent with his father for the first time in months.

What a weekend this was turning out to be.

He took a deep breath and let it out before turning toward the door. It was time to get back inside, to figuring out what Gabi had learned from Captain Mehler and hearing whatever insights Gibbs' years of experience could provide. His hand had gotten as far as the doorknob before his phone rang.

It looked like Gibbs' insights were going to have to wait just a little bit longer.


	19. Chapter 19

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 19**

_A/N: Happy Memorial Day! (Especially for my fellow Americans). No matter where you are, remember those who have served your country and made it what it is today._

* * *

DiNozzo pulled his phone from his pocket and frowned at the display. It wasn't a number in his list of contacts, leaving only the location of the area code: San Diego, CA. He tried to think of who he knew in San Diego, but no one was coming to mind.

He leaned against the bulkhead as he answered the call. "NCIS Special Agent DiNozzo," he greeted, wondering if his voice sounded as exhausted to his mystery caller as it did to him.

_"Hey, DiNozzo."_ And then he remembered that he did know someone in San Diego.

"Tomblin," he replied. "What's up? You still on your way to visit your old stomping grounds?"

_"Yeah,"_ she replied with a snort. _"As if it was my idea. Or just a visit to my old office."_ Well, she had a point. _"How's the case?"_

"Long story or short?"

There was a sigh from the other end of the call. _"I take it that means you haven't solved it yet and Vance still wants me to head out there."_

He had to give her credit; Kim Tomblin was a smart woman, seeing Director Vance's hand in all of this. "We're barely closer to solving it than we were when we arrived." His words were met with a long string of profanity that reminded him that there had been a time that Tomblin was in a Marine uniform instead of NCIS windbreaker. "So what's the deal? Aren't you on your way?"

_"No, not yet. I'm hanging out in my parents' living room, making faces at my two-year-old niece. I'm booked on the flight at 1700, and then thirty-six or so hours later, I should be landing in Bahrain."_

"Thirty-six hours?"

_"Yeah. Good luck traveling from the furthest corner of the known world to anywhere else any faster. It's practically a whole day of travel to get up here from San Diego, and that's in the same time zone. You want to fill me in on what kind of mess you guys have been making of the Middle East?"_

"It's really just one aircraft carrier, not the entire Middle East." Tomblin gave a snort of laughter at that. Realizing this had the potential to be a long conversation and that they might as well fill the rest of the team in at the same time, he asked, "Do you mind if I take this in the office and put you on speaker?"

_"Sure,"_ Tomblin agreed. _"It's been a while since I've talked to Freiler, anyway."_

"Actually, Freiler's the one person who isn't in the office. Don't know what he's doing, but he's wandering around this boat somewhere."

_"As Jeff likes to point out, they call them ships in the Navy."_

"Don't start," he said warningly as he re-entered the agent afloat office. "Everyone else has already said the same thing." He pressed the button on his phone for speaker. "I've got you on speaker in the office. You hear us okay?"

_"Yeah, still hear you,"_ Tomblin's disembodied voice replied. _"Who am I talking to?"_

"At the moment, just me, Gibbs, and Gabi,"DiNozzo replied.

_"Ah, Special Agent Al-Sheik. How're you liking your father's homeland?"_

"It's Stone now, actually," Gabi replied. "Makes me sound less like a terrorist. And my dad's from Saudi Arabia, not Bahrain, although now that I think about it, pointing that out isn't really helping my 'not a terrorist' cause much. By the way, I had to switch out the chair at my new desk. I didn't realize they made special chairs for midgets."

Tomblin chuckled. _"It's always so good for my self-esteem to chat with you, Al-Sheik,"_ she joked.

"Stone," Gabi reminded her.

"You can correct her when she gets here," Gibbs said, interrupting their reunion of sorts. "We were talking about Captain Mehler."

_"Who's Captain Mehler?"_ Tomblin asked. _"Maybe we should catch me up a bit."_

"The skipper," DiNozzo replied. "His son's the missing kid. We're down to two missing; divers found a petty officer and Israeli midshipman this morning."

_"Found alive?"_

"Nope."

There were a few seconds of silence. _"Things awkward with the Israelis yet?"_

"You can say that again," Gabi said dryly. DiNozzo shot her a warning look.

"The skipper called for your friend Dr. Mox the morning of the explosion, said his son tripped over an ankle breaker and landed on his knee. She had just left the ICU after the night shift. Captain Mehler said he'd be waiting with his son in her office until she arrived."

_"Think I'm following so far."_

"That's what the corpsman who took a message for Dr. Mox said. I had talked to the skipper when we arrived to the _Truman_ and he never mentioned the fact that he was with his son in Mox's office when the bomb went off."

_"Don't tell me he forgot where he was when his kid went missing,"_ Tomblin scoffed. DiNozzo gestured for Gabi to resume the storytelling, as this part was new to him, too.

"That's what we were talking about when you called," Gabi informed Tomblin. "To sum up a very long conversation, he said he _was_ sitting in Dr. Mox's office with Wyatt—his son—but then was called away. He left Wyatt in the doctor's office to wait for her to arrive."

_"How old's the kid?"_

"Five," Gabi replied. Tomblin snorted.

_"I have a five-year-old niece,"_ she informed them. _"Kids that age don't talk to strangers unless their parents are there to tell them it's okay. And there's no way a five-year-old would be able to give a medical history, at least to the detail that pediatricians like getting."_ They heard what sounded like a hand going over the receiver of the phone, and a few seconds later, Tomblin was back. _"Jeff just confirmed that a five-year-old at an appointment without a parent would be beyond useless."_ There were murmured words in the background they couldn't make out, followed by Tomblin's voice: _"I don't think it's actually _illegal_, Jeff. There's a difference between having a bad idea and breaking the law."_

"Gibbs said pretty much the same thing," Gabi interjected. "Only without using so many words."

_"Okay, so what we've got so far is that the skipper's either up to something or just not the world's best parent. What else? Anything from the bomb itself yet?"_

"Generic Semtex," DiNozzo replied.

_"Generic Semtex belonging to anyone in particular?"_

"Nobody that's in our database. Abby's re-running the tests."

There were a few seconds of silence, followed by what sounded like Tomblin walking from one room to the next. When she came back, her voice was entirely serious. _"We have a Libyan bomber."_

"In custody?" DiNozzo asked with a frown. Again, a few beats of silence.

_"Not exactly,"_ Tomblin finally hedged. _"I'm not going to get into details, just to say that we may have exchanged his knowledge and expertise for a new life in an undisclosed location in Italy."_

"You think he's involved?"

_"No,"_ Tomblin said quickly. _"But I think if anyone in the bombing game is, he'd know who."_ There were a few more seconds of silence as Tomblin continued to think things through. _"Al-Qaeda's favorite website has been pretty quiet about this, not even a 'this is what the American devil deserves for killing our holy warrior' post or some shit like that. If they were involved, they would have said something by now. Which means that this is either someone new, or Al-Qaeda's internet connection is down." _

"And you think whichever it is, this guy will know."

_"Let's just say there's more of a chance of him knowing than me."_

"So where can we find him?"

_"I don't think so, DiNozzo. This wasn't exactly a U.N. approved relocation. It's strictly classified and need-to-know, and not to be rude, but you don't need to know. There's an agent at the Naples office who was in on the relocation deal. I'll give him a call and have him have a chat with our guy, and then I'll get back to you with the details."_

"That seems a roundabout way of doing things," Gabi commented.

_"It's roundabout or not at all."_

"Do it," Gibbs instructed. "Don't think it'll help much, though."

_"Your gut telling you he doesn't know anything?"_ Her voice was just sarcastic enough that she kept it from being overly disrespectful, but from what DiNozzo remembered of listening over the partition while he was on medical leave from the MCRT and Tomblin was working with Gibbs, she preferred hard facts and forensics to gut instincts. She probably just hadn't been at the job long enough to develop good gut instincts. Then again, not everyone had a gut like Gibbs.

He didn't like being left out of the loop, but DiNozzo knew that Tomblin could be stubborn—to the point that Gibbs was stubborn; maybe it was a Corps thing—and that if they didn't do this part this way, it wouldn't happen at all. Maybe this was the real reason Vance wanted her called in. It wasn't necessarily that she knew more about terrorism than Gabi or all of Mossad, but that she had developed contacts over the years that they could take advantage of. "Give the guy in Naples a call and check on your Libyan friend," he instructed. "Maybe we'll have something back from him by the time you get here in a couple of days."

_"I can do that,"_ Tomblin promised. There were a few more beats of silence before she spoke again. _"Gibbs, did you look into that thing I asked you about?"_

"We can talk about that when you get here," Gibbs replied. Both Gabi and DiNozzo frowned and looked at each other; both shrugged their lack of understanding.

"Okay," DiNozzo said, ready to wrap up the phone call and get back to work. "Finish your packing, Tomblin. Looking forward to hearing your report. Safe travels."

_"Thanks, DiNozzo, Gibbs, Gabi. See you in a few. Oh, and DiNozzo? Lose this number. It's my private phone, and there are already too many people at NCIS who know it. And yes, Gibbs, that was referring to you."_


	20. Chapter 20

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 20**

* * *

Dr. Jeff Cunningham was still trying to redefine a new 'normal' for his life. Three months ago, he was living alone in his one-bedroom apartment in San Diego, enjoying the beginning of his second year of infectious disease fellowship and taking a couple of credits at a time toward his Master of Public Health degree at UCSD. Between seeing patients, completing coursework, and trying to have a social life—which usually consisted of going out for drinks with his fellow pediatricians and the occasional trip north to Pendleton to see the few Marine officers he had deployed with who were still in the area—his life was pretty busy, and he liked it that way.

Then one day, he was beginning his run to the hospital, and his life completely turned around. It only took a few words from his assailants and a well-photoshopped picture to make him think that they were holding Kim and would kill her if he didn't cooperate, and he was filling out leave forms with his distress phrase and wondering if either of them would be getting out alive. The next thing he knew, he was waking up in a hot and dusty room on the other side of the world, and since then, he couldn't really figure out what was going on. The injuries that he tried to convince himself at the time couldn't be all that bad had earned him four surgeries—so far—and almost three weeks as a patient in the hospital, which was definitely not where he wanted to be when it came to hospitals. The anthrax he may or may not have been exposed to earned him another booster of the vaccine plus four weeks of doxycycline, which made his skin so sensitive to the sun that even thinking about sitting on the beach that was just outside his apartment complex made his skin burn. And the girlfriend he had 'broken-up' with after they returned from Iraq four and a half years before was now living with him in the one-bedroom apartment she helped him pick out.

And there was no 'normal' when living with Kimberley Aiko Tomblin. And if he even thought about referring to her by her full name, she would knock him to his ass, still on crutches or not.

At the moment, the black-belt-in-two-martial-arts-disciplines, Arabic-speaking, Marine-turned-NCIS-field-agent-turned-anti-terrorism-expert was sitting on the floor of her parents' living room playing a game of cards with five nieces and nephews ranging from five to eleven while two-year-old Adriana was amusing herself with a set of the big Legos in a corner. Kim had disappeared to the kitchen to make a phone call about half an hour before, then stepped out onto the deck in the frigid November weather to make another phone call, and Jeff knew enough that he didn't want to get involved in Kim's secret phone calls. He had gotten enough of Kim's terrorist-fighting ways a few months before, and was content letting that part of her life be without interference from him. As if attempting interference would change anything when it came to Kim.

The light mood in the room ended suddenly as the door opened, admitting Kevan, followed closely by the eldest two Tomblin siblings. "Time to head to the airport," Kevan announced, bending down to pick up Adriana, who had run over when he walked into the room. He kissed his daughter on the forehead before returning her to the floor. "Where's your bag?"

"It's the ruck by the door," Kim replied, nodding toward the MARPAT rucksack. "What're Thing 1 and Thing 2 doing here?"

"Those are our call signs," one of the twins explained toward Cunningham. "And we're coming with you," he said to his sister.

"Hell, no," Kim replied bluntly. "Kev's pick-up may be big, but it isn't big enough for five people."

"I don't have to go," Jeff offered. "I can stay and watch the kids," he said, nodding toward the collection of under-12s in the room.

"Mom and Dad are around," Kim argued. "There's no fucking way you're leaving me to deal with these three alone for an hour and a half drive."

"But this means I'd have to deal with them alone for an hour and a half drive _back_," Jeff replied. "And they're all trained to kill."

"We're past the wanting you dead stage," one of the twins commented.

"Now the point is to get you wed," the other twin finished.

"Oh my God," Kim groaned. "That's it. I'm getting myself to the airport. I'll hitchhike if I have to."

"Quit your bitching," Kevan said. "Jiji said we can take the Jeep. There's plenty of room. Get in the fucking car."

They did as Kevan commanded and piled into the SUV, and for the next hour and a half, Cunningham was subjected to Kim's three older brothers all trying to get information out of her about the case she was leaving to work on and who she thought was behind it, with Kim deflecting the questions and continuously trying to change the subject, to no avail.

They arrived at the airport an hour before the plane was scheduled to leave for Seattle, and then the men bought themselves coffee and had a seat, amusing themselves with the sight of Kim arguing with the woman at the ticket counter and showing her NCIS credentials. "They're probably trying to figure out if NCIS is a real agency," Cunningham commented. "Really pisses Kim off."

"What? Something that pisses Kim off?" one of the twins commented innocently. "Never would have guessed." Cunningham just chuckled, knowing better than to verbally agree to that.

Kim appeared at their table and took Cunningham's drink from his hand without asking. "Stupid fucking idiot," she said as she took the fourth seat.

"Problems?" one of the twins asked innocently.

"'NCIS? What does that stand for? I've never heard of it,'" Kim mocked in a high-pitched falsetto. "I'm not asking for a recitation of federal agencies, moron. I'm just telling you why I'm not checking my fucking Sig." She took another drink of her boyfriend's coffee.

"You want your own?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'll go get it," she said, handing back the coffee and getting up to join the short line at Café Pangborn, returning to collapse at their table a few minutes later. "Fuck," she moaned. "I'm already exhausted and pissed off, and still have another thirty-six hours of travel before arriving in Bahrain."

"Is that why you only came home twice in the two years you were there?" Kevan asked.

"It's not as if you ever visited, so I don't think you can talk."

"I have a wife and two kids."

"I have the complete series of _M*A*S*H_ on DVD."

"What?" Kevan asked with a frown.

"Oh. Sorry. I thought we were talking about things that aren't relevant."

"Smartass."

"Besides, it's my series of _M*A*S*H_," Cunningham pointed out.

"Come on, man. If she's already claiming dibs on your stuff, you're already married. Might as well make it legal," a twin commented.

"Are they for real?" Cunningham asked Kim.

"I've been asking that since I was born," she replied. "If you ignore them long enough, they'll eventually leave for a foreign country." They both flipped her off.

She sighed at the line that was beginning to form at security, which also doubled as the only way to the only gate. "I guess that's my cue," she groaned. She took another long drink of her coffee before sliding it over to Cunningham and rising from her chair. "They'll let me carry a Sig Sauer onto the plane, but civilization as we know it will end if I cross security with more than three ounces of liquid." She bent down to give Jeff a quick kiss. "Love you."

"Love you, too, babe. Good luck, stay safe."

"Thanks. And I always do."

"Almost always," all three brothers said in unison.

"I'm still alive," she shot back. "And you three—be nice to Jeff. If and when we decide to get married is our decision, so stay the fuck out of it."

"She that bossy in bed?"

"Oh, good God. Don't answer that." As if he needed to be told. "With you three, is it any wonder I'm still not married at thirty-one?" she asked. "I'm getting out of here."

"Give me a call when you arrive in Bahrain," Jeff said. She nodded her agreement and shrugged her rucksack over her shoulders. She gave him another kiss before turning and heading toward security, adjusting her shirt to cover her Sig as she pulled out her credentials. She went straight to the front of the security line, much to the annoyance of her fellow passengers, showing the credentials and her permission to carry a firearm aboard to the TSA agent, who waved her through the entrance that didn't have a magnetometer.

"Wow," a twin commented. "That was quick. Must be nice to travel with her." Cunningham snorted.

"The free pass through security is only for her. Traveling with her means she goes through the LEO line and I wait with the tired and hungry masses and their three ounce bottles of shampoo." It was actually a little annoying, especially when he had to struggle with crutches and a broken arm and she gloated about her quick passage through security.

"Well, she's off," Kevan commented, standing up as Kim walked out of sight toward the small waiting plane. "Time to get going."

To Jeff's surprise—and the Tomblins' utter lack of surprise—they didn't head back to the orchard, but to the Veterans of Foreign Wars lodge in Chelan, about two-thirds of the way back, a place Cunningham was introduced to on his first trip out to the evergreen state and was featured in every one of his visits since. He actually felt a little ridiculous that he hadn't figured that the Tomblin men would be stopping there.

He left his crutches in the car, figuring that Kim was, at that point, probably at the airport in Seattle and wouldn't know any better, and followed the three Tomblins into the lodge, where they were met with the usual sounds of pool games and country music. "Come on in, boys," the bartender greeted, already pouring their beers. "Drinks are on the house for Tomblins this weekend. That includes the squids that come in with them."

"Thanks, Bob," Jeff replied dryly. "Always a pleasure drinking with former Marines."

Bob chuckled. "Eh, you're the closest thing a squid can be to becoming a Marine, so we're okay. Aren't you guys missing one?"

"Kim's working," Kevan replied.

"That little girl works too hard," Bob commented, sliding the last of the beers over to Kevan.

"Yup," Jeff replied.

"Last time he was here, Jack was saying you two got back together," Bob directed at Jeff. A twin snorted.

"Well, they're living together in a one-bedroom apartment in San Diego, so I'd say that's a safe bet," he commented.

"Really?" Jeff asked. "You say you don't want me dead, and you announce that in a bar full of men who all think that they're Kim's uncle? Do you have to try to be this annoying?"

"Nah, it comes naturally to Kanten," Kevan commented.

"Living situations aside, all I know is that Jack really wanted to see his little granddaughter marry this one," Bob said, gesturing toward Jeff. He frowned slightly and sighed. "Guess he didn't quite last long enough."

"Thanks, Bob. You're really helping my cause."

The bartender poured himself a glass of beer and held it up for a toast. "To Jack," he said. "One of the best old SOBs to walk through these doors." They all clinked glasses and drank in silence. "Gonna take us all a while to get used to him being gone."

"Yeah," Kevan replied. The others just nodded.

After a few more beats of silence, Bob turned his attention to Jeff again, frowning at the assortment of splints and walking casts he was sporting. "So what'd you do to yourself? Challenge Kim to a fight?"

"Nah, he's not that foolish," one of the twins—Karsten, since Kevan identified the other as Kanten—replied for Jeff. "Challenged a bunch of terrorists instead."

"It wasn't really a challenge—" Cunningham began.

"He's right," Kevan commented. "The other guys are all dead."

"Although if Kim had been doing her job as an instructor, Cunningham woulda been able to neutralize the threat without a scratch on his body," Kanten added. "Instead, he had to wait for NCIS to come in and shoot the bad guys while he was bleeding on the floor."

"We tried to make you sound a little more impressive, but this fucker went and ruined it," Kevan said to Cunningham. Jeff decided it was a good time to keep his mouth shut about the fact that the people who had been doing the shooting of the bad guys were Mossad, not NCIS. Some things weren't exactly public knowledge, and terrorist camps in Yemen were on that list.

"I feel like throwing pointy things at a wall. Bob, you got some darts for us?" Kevan asked, abruptly changing the subject.

"Only if you promise to throw them at the wall and not at each other," the bartender warned as he handed them over.

"We're not five," Kevan protested.

"You were threatening to do just that the last time the three of you were all here together," Bob replied.

"He has a point," Karsten commented.

"Oh, shut up," Kevan said.

Bob chuckled as the three brothers headed toward the dart boards. "Those Tomblins… If they're anything like their parents or grandfathers, they'll never grow up."

"That's certainly true," Cunningham agreed.

"So I take it this work that Kim is doing has something to do with the aircraft carrier that's all over the news," Bob said conversationally. "I figure nothing short of attacks on American ships could get Kim away from the orchard less than a week after her papa dies."

Cunningham shrugged. "Can't really talk about it," he said. "All I can say is she is definitely not happy to be going."

Bob nodded and poured another beer, handing it over to Cunningham without his asking. "And she left you here alone against her entire family."

Cunningham chuckled as he raised the fresh beer to his lips. "Not the first time that's happened."

"Oh, so she knows about the times you came up here without her?"

"Not unless anyone's told her, and it certainly hasn't been me." It was something he still couldn't figure out—he had probably visited Tomblin-Tojo Orchards more than his own mother's house over the last few years, and it wasn't just because the flight from San Diego to Seattle was shorter than the one to Philly. It had started simply enough; he had gone up for Kim's twenty-eighth and Aya's second birthdays, a few weeks before Kim finished her probationary period at Silverdale and headed for the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ for a year afloat, and while he was there, he found himself agreeing to run Bloomsday, an overcrowded 12K run in Spokane, with Chris and Kevan. By the time the first Sunday in May rolled around, Kim was gone and Jeff was hanging out with her family. After that, it happened once every few months, where he would go north and spend time with Tomblins and pretend that it was perfectly normal for him to do so. In the three plus years that Kim was away, he definitely spent more time at orchard than she did. That was where he went for advice when he was asked if he wanted to deploy with 1st Recon on very little notice, when he didn't know if he wanted to stay in San Diego or take his chances on a reassignment, when he didn't know what he was doing with his life and couldn't figure out why he couldn't let go of the deployment fling he had with Kim.

In retrospect, it was a little creepy. He'd probably be freaked out by him, and 'stalker' wasn't exactly the impression he wanted to leave with the woman he hoped to marry. Someday.

Kevan's victorious cheer emerged from the corner near the dart boards, followed immediately by two identical voices protesting that he had cheated and questions about his lineage. "I'm your _brother_, you fucking morons," Kevan replied to the taunts.

Jeff and Bob watched the interaction with amused interest. "I've known those Tomblins their entire lives, Cunningham," Bob commented. "As much as I love Kim like she was my own daughter, I can see why someone wouldn't be in a hurry to marry into all that craziness." He poured himself another beer. "But if I were you, I wouldn't wait too long. Tomblins aren't known for their patience. Even Kim."


	21. Chapter 21

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 21**

_A/N: There have been some comments about some confusion with trying to follow the timeline, which I admit is a bit confusing. Everything is written in chronological order (or close to it) in real time, but with the time zones, it makes it seem like it's jumping around. For example, when it's noon in Bahrain, it's 0900 on the _Truman_, 0400 in Washington, DC, and 0100 on the west coast, where Tomblin was. I'll put a time stamp at the beginning of the chapters to help keep things in line._

_And, as always, thanks to all my readers and reviewers; even when I'm too busy to respond to your reviews, I do appreciate them. I do try to respond to questions (unless it's about who did it-you have to wait for that!), so if you have a question and I don't get back to you in a few days, feel free to bug me about it._

* * *

Bahrain, 0500 (0200 Zulu) Sunday

Ziva David awoke feeling drained, such a stark contrast to her instant alertness on the carrier the morning before that she had to stop to take stock of the differences. On the _Truman_, she had slept less than five hours on a thin mattress on the top bunk in shared quarters; now that she was back on land, she was in the familiar and very comfortable king-sized bed that used to be in Tony's apartment, the spacious yet still bare master suite greeting her.

So it probably wasn't the bed. It was much more likely that it was everything else going on with the case.

After she told Tony that she leaving the _Truman _with the Israeli midshipmen and their training officers, it had been a long wait before they were finally given permission to take off in the boat, and then another long wait, during which the midshipmen were obviously losing their patience with waiting and the training officers were just as obviously losing their patience with the midshipmen, before the simple casket containing Midshipman Spivak's body arrived via helicopter. Ziva didn't know who had given the honor guard an Israeli flag, but she was glad they had. The young midshipman deserved that much. He deserved much more.

As they were still needed for the investigation, the remaining Israelis were given quarters on base and asked to refrain from causing problems, and Ziva finally left their ranks to get back to work. The first stop was her office, where one coworker—Avrum Dardik—shared with her his latest findings, and the other—David Cohen—seemed eager to be sent out into the world to do some 'damage control', as he liked to call it. Ziva had told him that if didn't leave her alone, he was going to have to speak to a Mossad psychiatrist about his violent tendencies. He had just smirked and went back to whichever movie it was he had been watching on his computer.

Avrum hadn't found anything new on the bomber, which prompted Ziva spend another three hours calling the other operatives under her control, spread out across several countries on the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa. By the time she had made it back to her new house, she had several promises to look into it and nothing actually helpful.

No wonder she hadn't slept well.

She was feeling slightly more human after her run and even more human after breakfast and coffee, but still didn't know where to go to help move this case along. However, she did know where she could go to give herself a new perspective on the case, and in all likelihood, make her feel better.

"Ziva!" She had barely entered the NCIS forensics lab when she found herself wrapped in a tight bear hug. "Oh my God, it's really you!" Abby Sciuto continued, still holding on tight. "I mean, of course it's you, but, it's just been so long since I've seen you!"

"Abby," Ziva managed. "I cannot breathe."

"Right." Abby finally released her, but kept her hands on Ziva's upper arms, as if to ensure that the Mossad case officer wouldn't find a way to run away. "How are you? How's Tony? Where's Tony, anyway? And let me see that ring! I can't believe you guys got _married_, and you didn't even tell us! What—"

"Abby," Ziva interrupted. She was going to lose track of the questions if she didn't make an effort to start answering them. "I am fine. Tony is also fine. He is still on the _Truman_, working on the case." She held out the smoothie she had in her hand. "I do not know if Bahrain has Caf-Pow, but I doubt it. One of my coworkers is quite fond of smoothies. He says this one has enough caffeine to jump start an elephant." Ziva frowned. "I do not know what that is supposed to mean," she admitted.

"Oh! Thank you!" Abby gushed. "I haven't had any caffeine since, well, since I don't remember when." She took a long drink of the smoothie and made a face like she was thinking about what her opinion of it was. "Not bad," she finally declared. "I mean, it's no Caf-Pow, but it's pretty good by itself. And anything is better than trying to give up caffeine again." Ziva nodded; she remembered the caffeine-free Abby experiment and had been glad when it ended.

"The ring!" Abby exclaimed out of the blue after a few long seconds of sucking down the caffeinated fruit smoothie, almost making Ziva jump in surprise. "I haven't seen the ring yet!" Ziva dutifully held up her left hand to give the forensic scientist a chance to examine the engagement ring and wedding band in detail. "Wow," Abby said. "He did a good job. I mean, a _really_ good job." She frowned and looked at Ziva sternly. "You didn't help him with this, did you? When my college roommate got engaged, her fiancée—well, now her husband, but then her boyfriend—took her with him to go shopping for rings, so he couldn't mess it up, and, I mean, that's a good and all, but there's just something about the guy picking out the engagement ring himself—"

"I did not help Tony," Ziva interrupted. "He did this on his own." Well, him and an octogenarian jeweler who was a little bit too good at his job and liked to make sure people knew it, a fact that led to him unintentionally being part of a plot that led to the death of a series of significant others of members of a large DC synagogue years before.

"Well, he did a really good job," Abby repeated. "So how's married life? Not that I've forgiven you for getting married without telling us, but, well, I'm curious."

"It is pretty much as one would expect of being married to Tony," Ziva replied. Abby wrinkled her nose.

"That bad, huh?"

Ziva couldn't help but laugh. "It is not bad," she informed her friend. "We have not been married long enough to have any major disagreements."

"You mean, more major than usual."

"Of course." With their entire lives taking place at work, it was no surprise that everyone at work knew everything about their lives, good and bad.

And speaking of work, she might as well kill two birds with one stone. "Do you have anything new from the case?" Ziva asked Abby.

"Yes and no," the forensic scientist replied, all thoughts of wedding rings and newlywed life on temporary hiatus as she got down to business. "I repeated the analysis of the bomb that was run yesterday," she said, nodding toward another part of the lab, where the usual three scientists were working. "I used the same sample that was collected at the scene from Agent, uh—"

"Freiler," Ziva informed her.

"Right, Agent Freiler," Abby repeated with an emphatic nod. "What's he like, anyway? He has this really neat handwriting—"

"Married," Ziva interrupted. "He is Mormon, and married, and his fourth child is due soon."

"Well, I didn't mean 'what's he like' as someone to _date_," Abby said with a roll of her eyes. "I was just wondering what kind of person he is."

"He is very nice and proficient in his job. Abby. The results?"

"Right. The lab results." She brought something up on the computer, none of which made sense to Ziva. "So, like I was saying, I tested the same sample that was tested yesterday morning, and got exactly the same results."

Ziva felt the slight bit of hope that this was all a lab error die with those words. "It is still generic Semtex that does not match any known bomber in the database."

"Yes and no."

"No?"

"That was from testing the same sample, but Agent Freiler collected a few samples from the bomb site. I used the photographs and sketches that he took to make a diagram of the scene." The one computer monitor Abby had been allocated was nothing like the set-up she had in her lab back at the Navy Yard, but she was apparently making do as she exchanged the sample results that made no sense to Ziva with a map of the exploded section of the _Truman_, with only a few keystrokes. "The sample that was analyzed was from the fuse, which was right here," she said, indicating an area right by the epicenter of the explosion. "I tested the other samples as well, which were from here, here, and here," she said, pointing at the corresponding sites on the diagram. "In all the other samples, there were trace amounts of kerosene, highest right here."

"An accelerant?" That could explain how the bomb did so much damage. Semtex was damaging, but not damaging enough to kill fifteen people and injure many more, not when it went off in a low-traffic area of the ship, such as a storage bay.

"Could be," Abby said, sounding like she wasn't quite convinced. "I think it might have been unintentional, though. If our bomber was going to use an accelerant, it would make sense to have it at the flashpoint, not on the other side of the room. The chemical signature's consistent with JP-5—"

"JP-5?"

"Jet fuel," Abby explained.

"Something that would be found on an aircraft carrier."

"Exactly!" Abby exclaimed excitedly. "I think our bomber set the bomb not realizing that there was some sort of container of JP-5 in the storage compartment as well."

"So it was unintentional," Ziva said, more to herself than to Abby, trying to figure out how this fit into the case. It actually made sense with what she already knew. Whoever set the bomb used a relatively unexciting explosive—especially considering there were nuclear materials on board—in a very unexciting part of the ship—a storage compartment—none of which was consistent with the usual patterns of goals of bombers. They liked to make big statements and cause as much damage as possible.

The bomb wasn't the main event. It was the distraction. It just got out of hand.

"Thank you, Abby," Ziva said, already pulling her phone from her pocket and heading for the door.

"But Ziva—"

"Come to my house for dinner tonight," Ziva said, stopping to write down her address on a scrap of paper. "I will cook for you and explain everything."


	22. Chapter 22

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 22**

* * *

U.S.S. Harry S Truman, 0200 Zulu, Sunday

For the second morning in a row, Tony DiNozzo woke abruptly on an uncomfortable bunk in junior officer's quarters, this time avoiding smacking his head against the upper bunk and without the ridiculously loud snoring he once thought he would never get so used to. It was amazing what almost three years with the same person did to his perceptions of normal sleep sounds.

He checked his cell phone and groaned, collapsing back onto the bunk. Nothing like waking up at 0500 for no particular reason for the second day in a row.

Guess it wasn't just Ziva's snoring that he had grown accustomed to. It must have been all of her sleeping habits put together. He might never sleep in to a decent hour again.

It was that sobering thought that he realized that returning to sleep wasn't going to be happening, and with another groan, pulled himself out of bed. "Shower, then coffee," he muttered to himself, realizing as he did so just how crazy that made him sound.

His wife had been gone for all of six hours and he was already ready to commit himself to the rubber room. This did not bode well for the remainder of the marriage, especially if Ziva was planning on continuing to go off on her top secret Mossad missions. Which she was.

He showered and dressed in a fresh NCIS tee-shirt, pulling on the same khakis he had been wearing the last few days—the only ones he brought, not thinking he'd be spending at least two nights on board without a trip home—and made what had become his usual rounds on the ship: mess hall for coffee, infirmary for updates, agent afloat office to coordinate the investigation.

The coffee was as unremarkable as it had been since he arrived, but he did have an unexpected surprise waiting for him in the infirmary. "Dr. Mox," he greeted as he entered. The petite pediatrician looked up from the iPad on her lap and smiled.

"Agent DiNozzo," she returned.

"Call me Tony," he said, giving her one of the large grins he reserved for talking to women who might be able to help him on a case.

"In that case, it's Siobhan," she replied. "What brings you to the ICU at this ungodly hour?"

"Well, Siobhan, I was wondering if you could give me an update on the patients."

She glanced over at the five filled bays before she began speaking. "Midshipman Segal was transferred out of the ICU yesterday morning and left for base with the rest of the Israelis last night. He should be hanging out in the base hospital until they're ready to head back to Israel. Petty Officer Moore was also transferred out yesterday and is in the main infirmary. IS Russillo is in pretty bad shape—"

"IS?" DiNozzo interrupted. "You have an intelligence specialist?"

"Yeah," Dr. Mox replied with a frown. "I'm assuming he worked in comms, which was right next to the storage compartment with the bomb. Why?"

"What kind of injuries does he have?" he asked, not answering her question.

"The kind you would expect from someone who was too close to a bomb," Dr. Mox said slowly, still frowning. "Why?"

"Specifically, what injuries does he have?"

She was starting to get exasperated with his continued asking of questions without answering any of hers, and it showed in her response. "Specifically, he has increased intracranial pressure with a midline shift due to a subdural hematoma. The burr holes have slowed the swelling down some, but that's really just a temporary measure until we can get him off and on his way to Landstuhl. He also has fractures of the C6, C7, and T1 spinous processes and right clavicle. Because of his increased ICP, his systolic blood pressure has been on the rise, despite the fact that he's been under general anesthesia with—"

"Okay," DiNozzo interrupted. "Sorry I asked."

"Why do you need to know?"

He tried to figure out how to word his question. "Is there any chance that his injuries weren't all caused by the blast?"

He had to give her credit; Dr. Mox was a smart woman. "You think that he could have been a target because of his rate."

"Intelligence specialists are fairly valuable when cruising around the Middle East."

"I don't doubt it," Dr. Mox agreed. "Sorry to burst a bubble in your conspiracy theory, though, but I don't see anything that makes me think he just wasn't too close to something that went boom. Not that I have any training in forensics, but I do have some experience with bomb victims. Marines who have been too close to an IED can look a lot like IS Russillo looks right now."

DiNozzo nodded slightly. "He going to be okay?"

Dr. Mox shook her head. "No," she said softly. "Odds are definitely against him."

"Even if he gets to Landstuhl?"

"Even if he left for Landstuhl right after he was hit."

They stood in silence for a few seconds after that before Dr. Mox broke the silence. "In other news," she began, "the divers pulled another body out of the water about two hours ago. IS2 Hampton Haas."

"Another IS." Dr. Mox shrugged.

"Comms was right next to the bomb, and ISs are likely to be in comms."

"Wasn't anybody spending time with their families on Family Weekend?"

That got a slight smile out of the pediatrician. "Both IS Russillo and Haas were—are?—pretty young guys. Probably don't have families, maybe volunteered to work so some of their coworkers could have some time off for family weekend activities. And not everyone's family's at Bahrain."

"Like yours?"

"Quantico," she replied with a nod. "Actually, my husband was on an FTX—field training exercise—with his battalion. They had to send an actual search party to find him to tell him that my ship was bombed but I'm okay." Her smile widened as she held up her casted arm. "Two deployments with the Corps and I get my first scratch while on an easy cruising assignment." The smile faded slightly and she looked away. "We're trying to figure out what we're going to say to our sons. Ben's too young to grasp much of reality—fifteen months—but Andrew's five. Just old enough to figure out when something's going on." She looked back up at DiNozzo. "You have kids?"

He shook his head. "Nope," he replied. He twisted his wedding band slightly with his thumb. "Just got married a couple of weeks ago."

"Congratulations."

"Thanks," he replied. Hearing her son's age—the same age as Wyatt Mehler—reminded him of the missing kid. "Is there any word about the skipper's kid?"

The last of her smile completely dropped off her face. "No," she replied. "I can't even imagine what they must be going through…" Her voice trailed off as she shook her head.

"Is there any chance…"

"That they'll find him alive?" she finished for him, shaking her head again. "As doctors, we always hedge our bets and never say never, but if he's in the water without a lifejacket or raft, no. My son's a pretty strong swimmer for his age, but there's no way even the strongest five-year-old could come close to treading water for that long. And if he did have a lifejacket or raft, they would have found him a long time ago."

He wondered if Captain Mehler, or the captain's ex-wife, had come to the same realization about their son's fate. He wondered how any parent handled that kind of situation. It was something Gibbs would know, but DiNozzo wasn't nearly thick-headed enough to ask his former supervisory agent such a question.

That reminded him of the conversation Gabi relayed to them in the agent afloat office the evening before. "The skipper said he was waiting for you in your office with his son," he began. "But then he was called away and left the boy in your office to wait for you. Any idea why he would do that?"

"Maybe if he's not that familiar with taking his kid to the pediatrician," Dr. Mox said with a shrug. "Or not that familiar with his kid. Either way, seems like a pretty bone-headed move, if you ask me. Pediatrics is like veterinary medicine—you can ask a dog where it hurts, but it's not going to tell you anything. You need to ask the owners. Think of parents as the owners of children. You can't really do anything with the kids unless their parents are there. Half the time, I can't even get a good answer from my own kid about scrapes and scratches unless Zack or I actually saw him fall."

DiNozzo nodded; it was pretty much exactly what both Gibbs and Cunningham, through Tomblin, had said. "Okay," he said. "Thanks." He started to make his way toward the door when Dr. Mox's voice stopped him.

"Tony," she called out. "Any idea yet what's going on?"

He wanted to tell her that they were right on the verge of cracking the case, but didn't want to lie to her. "Not yet," he said instead. "We're looking into a couple of things, leaving no stone unturned, you know how it is." He realized after the words were out of his mouth just how ridiculous that all sounded and tried for his best reassuring smile. "Don't worry. We'll figure it out."


	23. Chapter 23

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 23**

* * *

U.S.S. Harry S Truman, 0500 Zulu, Sunday

It came as no surprise to DiNozzo to find Gibbs already in the agent afloat office, seated in the chair DiNozzo had claimed for himself behind the desk. What was slightly more surprising was the presence of DiNozzo's junior field agent in one of the office's other chairs and the complete lack of conversation between the two men. "Morning," DiNozzo greeted cautiously.

"Good morning," Special Agent Todd Freiler greeted. Gibbs barely glanced up from the stack of papers he was perusing before his eyes fell back to his reading.

"You're in my seat, Gibbs," DiNozzo said, wondering just how that statement would treat him. It did get a response from Gibbs, in the form of a glance over at the office's third chair.

"Don't see anything wrong with that one," he said simply.

"Except it's not where I…never mind," DiNozzo replied with a sigh, taking the chair that had previously been covered by files and folders, now still on the floor next to the chair where Gabi had left them. And while thinking of his senior field agent… "Anyone seen Gabi yet this morning?"

"Not yet," Freiler replied. He glanced at his watch and shrugged. "Maybe the mess for coffee?"

DiNozzo waved aside the question; Gabi was a big girl and could take care of herself. Besides, there was a better than even chance she was currently wandering around the carrier, hopelessly lost. It was best to just stay in one place and wait for her to break down and ask someone for directions to where she had started. "Either of you have anything?"

Gibbs glanced over the top of his reading glasses at DiNozzo before nodding over to Freiler. DiNozzo didn't know if that meant that Freiler had something or just that Gibbs wanted the junior field agent to go first, but either way, it meant that Gibbs wasn't talking at the moment. "Uh, I don't know if I'd say I _have_ anything—"

"Freiler, you're killing me," DiNozzo groaned. "We need something. From somewhere. At this point, I don't care where. I'd be happy if Ziva gave me a call and told me that Dardik's spying of our lab resulted in the case-breaking—." He stopped talking abruptly, the ringing of his phone interrupting him. He pulled it from his pocket and blinked in surprise at the display: Ziva (cell).

"That Ziva?" Gibbs asked mildly. DiNozzo didn't know if it was Gibbs' sixth sense when it came to cases or if it was just the logical conclusion at seeing DiNozzo's surprise, but either way, the new SAC in Bahrain wasn't going to dignify it with a response.

"Hey, Sweetcheeks," he greeted as he accepted the call. "I'm in the office with Gibbs and Freiler."

_"You can put me on speaker,"_ Ziva responded, correctly interpreting why he announced that fact; if it was a private call, she could have told him so and he would have stepped outside. If it was a work call, he could put her on speaker and she could fill everyone in at once. He pressed the speaker button. _"No Gabi?"_ Ziva asked.

"Probably lost somewhere," Gibbs replied. He didn't sound any more concerned about that fact than DiNozzo was. "What've you got?"

"Mossad dig up anything good?" Freiler chimed in.

_"Unfortunately, no,"_ Ziva said with a sigh. _"I have multiple promises from operatives to look into it and an offer from Cohen to provide retribution, but that is all from Mossad. My information comes from Abby."_

"She got something in the forensics?" DiNozzo asked as he straightened in his chair. He made a mental note to send Vance a thank you card when the case was over for ordering him to get Abby to come.

_"Yes, but nothing that your lab people could not have figured out eventually."_ It was the 'eventually' that was the key to that sentence.

"Get the bomber's signature?" Gibbs asked.

_"No,"_ Ziva answered.

"Then what've you got?" Gibbs demanded. DiNozzo flinched at the tone; it was Gibbs through-and-through, but Ziva no longer worked for Gibbs and had gotten a bit used to being her own boss in the last three months. And she hated being interrupted.

But she and Gibbs had always had a working relationship that was a little bit different than anything DiNozzo had ever encountered, so he wasn't really surprised when she slowly replied, _"I was getting to that, Gibbs. The explosive composition is exactly as the lab reported and does not match any Interpol known bomber. However, only one sample was tested. When Abby tested all others, she found trace amounts of JP-5."_

"Jet fuel?" DiNozzo asked. That was one of the carry-overs from his time as agent afloat; he learned a little bit about how airplanes worked. Not much, just enough to communicate to mechanics and pilots and crew chiefs.

_"Yes, Tony. That JP-5."_ Even though she couldn't see, he still rolled his eyes at her. _"I believe there was a container of JP-5 in the storage compartment that the bomber was not aware of."_

"I'm not seeing how this helps us," Gibbs commented with a frown. Again, Ziva was uncharacteristically patient in her explanation.

_"What bomber have you ever heard of who was not interested in making as big of an explosion as possible?"_ she asked rhetorically. _"There are nuclear materials on board. Why not use those?"_

"The bomb was supposed to be small," DiNozzo said, beginning to pick up on what Ziva was so excited about. "The jet fuel was an accident."

_"Yes, Tony,"_ Ziva said, sounding relieved that someone else was picking up on the same thing she saw. _"I believe the bomb was set to be a distraction."_ And if someone knew blowing stuff up as a distraction, it was Ziva. Tony didn't even want to know to know how many times she had used that particular tactic.

"So the question is, what was the bomb distracting from?" He thought about his conversation with Dr. Mox in the ICU regarding the intelligence specialists. "Two dead and two injured, one critically, are ISs."

"And comms is right next to the storage compartment that was bombed," Freiler commented.

"Right," DiNozzo said with a nod. "IS2 Hampton Haas and IS3 Amy Williams are the deceased, IS1 Justin Russillo is in critical condition, IS3 Phil Bach had a concussion."

"So I'll go talk to Bach and figure out what they were working on," Freiler said. DiNozzo was proud of him; he was getting good at figuring out his assignments without being told.

"Don't forget to talk to their chief," Gibbs added. Freiler nodded and jotted it down in his notebook.

"The chief of what?" All three men turned to the door of the agent afloat office, where Special Agent Gabi Stone was standing, coffee cup in hand. "Sorry. You'd think I'd know the route from the mess to this office by know, but I swear, this ship is just like Hogwarts." She took a sip as she registered the blank looks on all three faces. "Oh, come on!" she exclaimed. "Moving staircases? Rooms that appear out of thin air? Todd, you've got small kids, and Tony, don't even try to make me believe you haven't seen _Harry Potter._"

_"He has,"_ Ziva's voice said from the phone. Gabi blinked in surprise.

"Hey, Ziva," she greeted a second later. "Sorry, didn't know you were joining us. You got something?"

"The bomb was a distraction," DiNozzo said, summing up the conversation. "We just need to figure out what it was distracting us from."

"Oh," Gabi replied. "Well, don't forget about the skipper. He's got to be hiding something. Why else would he leave his five-year-old in a strange doctor's office?"

"Speaking of the skipper," Freiler said, flipping through his notebook until he found the right page, "he's one of the people on the ship with explosives experience. And when I say 'one of the people on the ship', I mean about six hundred people have some sort of training in dealing with explosives. In Captain Mehler's case, his first assignment after graduating from college was an MP officer. He took an explosive training course twenty years ago as an ensign."

DiNozzo frowned as he filed that piece of information away and tried to figure out where it fit. He wondered if the Navy of twenty years ago was all that interested in teaching their ensigns how to build and set off bombs. "He's going through a divorce, right?"

"Uh, actually, it was finalized a little more than a year ago, right before his PCS to Bahrain," Freiler replied. "Amicable split, no contestations on either side. And his ex-wife has sole physical custody in Norfolk. The captain has full visitation rights when he's in town."

"Ziva, you still with us?" DiNozzo asked.

_"I am still here, Tony."_

"I need you to do us a favor."

There were a few seconds of silence. _"You know I do not like talking to the wives and mothers, Tony."_

"I know." Oh, boy, did he know, and she made sure he knew just how much. "I would do it if I were there," well, he'd probably send Freiler…the guy just exuded trust and comfort, "but since we're all still on the boat and you're on base, it makes a lot more sense for you to go." He held his breath and counted the seconds, practically hearing Ziva's reluctance over the phone.

_"Fine,"_ Ziva finally said, sounding extremely unexcited about the idea. _"I will speak to the ex-wife."_

"Thank you, Sweetcheeks," he said, knowing he was going to have to pay for this and okay with that fact.

_"Have you heard from Tomblin yet?"_ Ziva asked.

"She's on her way." He tried to do the math to figure out when she'd be arriving, but between the time zones and the travel time, just got himself confused. "I'll let you know when she's in town."

_"I am sure I will figure it out. I do not think Tomblin will be able to enter Bahrain without anyone noticing."_


	24. Chapter 24

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 24**

* * *

Amsterdam, 1600 (1400 Zulu), Sunday

The Amsterdam airport was one of Kim Tomblin's favorites, mainly because it was one of the few airports in Europe that you could get to via a non-stop flight from Seattle. A ten-plus hour non-stop flight, but a non-stop flight nonetheless, and when flying from one corner of the earth to another, minimizing the number of airports was key. Not that any of that helped the overall traveling process or the jetlag that accompanied it, however.

After getting her burgundy official passport stamped by some bored Dutch customs official—it was almost a relief to know that all customs official were the same, the world over—Tomblin headed for the first coffee stand—ah, Starbucks, another thing that was the same the world over—and gave herself a few seconds to collect herself and just enjoy the caffeine before she began taking stock of the situation.

One: it had been fourteen hours since she left Jeff in her brothers' incredibly incapable hands in Wenatchee. Probably not the best place to start with taking stock; now she just wanted to go back to make sure they didn't break her boyfriend. More than he was already broken. She made a mental note to give him a call and make sure he was still breathing. Sometime after she figured out the time zones and what time it was in Pateros.

Two: she was halfway to Bahrain to help Gibbs and DiNozzo and company investigate a bombing on an aircraft carrier, which may or may not be related to terrorism. Always fun.

Three: she needed to check in with her counterpart in Naples, to see if her Libyan "friend" had anything to offer to the case. She hated dealing with shady characters; she never knew if they were being shady to her. She just always assumed that they were.

Now that she had a plan of attack—or something resembling one—figured out, she headed for the KLM lounge to get down to business in a relatively quiet environment. She informed the woman at the desk that she had some sensitive business to take care of, and with a knowing nod, was escorted into a private room that looked a lot more like an executive's office than a place in the airport. It looked a lot more like a legitimate office than her "office" at NCIS SD, which was a cubical in the field agent section.

Her BlackBerry had been turned off since she left San Diego for the orchard, and the sound of it coming back on gave her an almost visceral reaction to being back to work. Well, it was too late now.

She found the contact she was looking for and leaned back in the chair as she waited for the call to connect. _"NCIS Anti-Terrorism, Special Agent Dirk, how can I help you?"_

"Hey, Andy," Tomblin greeted. "It's Kim. I'm hanging out in the KLM lounge while laid over in Amsterdam. Please tell me you have news for me that I can carry to Bahrain."

There were a few ominous seconds of silence, enough to make Tomblin close her eyes in pain. Was there anything else that could go wrong with this case? _"I called…well, you know who I called, and he didn't want to speak to me over the phone. So I drove down there, and he still didn't want to talk to me."_

"What?"

_ "He said he's only going to talk to you. He said you'll know why."_

"Because he's an ass?"

_"Yeah, but I don't think that's what he was thinking."_ Probably that her abrasive nature and impatience reminded him of his second wife, a similarity he brought up every time they spoke._ "So what are you going to do?"_

She sighed and closed her eyes again. "I don't think I have much of a choice," she finally said. "I'm going to have to go to Italy."

_ "You know, it's not that horrible of a place."_

She chuckled slightly. "Believe me, if I were picking a place to go on vacation, Italy would be on the list. Place to pick up a terrorist? Not so much." She sighed and again and massaged her temple as she figured out what the hell she was going to do. "Okay," she finally said. "Let me call my travel person in San Diego and see if I arrange a lay-over in Naples. I'll call you back as soon as I have an answer."

She ended the call and scrolled through her contacts until she found the travel coordinator for the San Diego office. _"Travel, this is Valerie, how can I help you?"_

"Hey, Val, it's Kim," she greeted, wondering how many times she was going to have to say those words before her next flight. "I need a favor."

_"Uh-oh,"_ Valerie replied. _"Flight back from Bahrain already?"_

"I wish," Tomblin scoffed. "I'm still in Amsterdam. I'm going to need a lay-over in Naples on the way down to Bahrain."

There was some clicking heard over the line on the other end. _"How long of a lay-over?"_ Valerie asked. Tomblin chewed her lower lip as she thought about this. It was two hours from Naples to Potenza, two hours back, enough time to check-in again, enough time to convince her favorite Libyan bomber to play nice…

"Better make it eight hours," she answered. There was more clicking on the other end.

_"Okay, I have you on a flight from Amsterdam to Munich and then onto Naples on Lufthansa leaving in an hour and a half. That gets you into Naples at 2100 local, then you have until 0640 tomorrow morning until your flight out of there. Lay-over in Athens and then onto Bahrain, landing at 1900 local. It's too bad you're only going to be there at night… I've always wanted to go to Italy."_

"Yeah," Tomblin scoffed. "Because I would get so much opportunity to sight-see." There was really no need to take her hostilities out on her travel coordinator. "Thanks, Valerie, I owe you one."

_"You know what I take as payment."_

Tomblin chuckled. "I'll bring you an apple pie on my first day back."

_"How about some of that applesauce you brought to Beth's party a couple of weeks ago?"_

"I can do you one better. I'll grab a couple of jars of my mom's applesauce. She's the one who invented that recipe, so she's the one who really knows how to make it. I'm sure she's making my nieces and nephews help her make a fresh batch, so there will be plenty to go around."

_"We've got a deal. Some applesauce and an apple pie."_

"I wasn't aware you were getting both," Tomblin said with a chuckle.

_"Hey, I had to change an entire itinerary in two minutes."_

"And I couldn't have done it without you." And with any luck, she'd be needing Valerie's services soon to get her back to Washington. This was clearly someone it was best not to cross. "You'll find yourself inundated with apple products soon."

_"Thanks, Kim. Take care."_

"Will do. Thanks, Val."

Two phone calls down, at least two to go. A quick check of the time zone app on her phone told her that while she should probably let Jeff get some more sleep—especially if the drive back to the orchard from the airport included a stop at the VFW, which knowing her brothers, it undoubtedly did—but it would be right when DiNozzo would be working. Of course, in the middle of such a big case, any time would be right when DiNozzo would be working.

So after calling Andy Dirk back and telling him her new travel itinerary and that she'd need a pick-up at the airport when she arrived, it was onto DiNozzo. The phone only rang once before the call connected. _"Hey, Tomblin,"_ DiNozzo greeted. _"You need a pick-up in Bahrain?"_

"Well, I'm sure I will, but not yet," she replied. "And I thought I told you to lose this number."

"_You called from your NCIS BlackBerry." _

"Oh." She needed sleep, which brought up the next point. "I think we need to discuss your concept of time, if you think it's possible for me to have gotten from north central Washington to Bahrain already."

_"Okay…"_

"I'm in Amsterdam," she informed him, getting back to the point. "And I talked to our Italian colleague about our…Libyan friend."

_"Learn anything?"_

"That he's an ass, but I knew that already." She tried to figure how to word this. "He's not interested in talking to anyone but me."

_"You have a fan club."_

"Or a stalker. So I'm hopping on a flight for Italy and leaving from there tomorrow morning. I'll be landing in Bahrain at 1900 tomorrow."

_"1900?"_

"You do understand military time, right?"

_"I've been using military time since you were still in diapers, Tomblin."_

"I really doubt that, DiNozzo." Back to the point; there wasn't enough time for verbal sparring with DiNozzo if she wanted to talk to Jeff before she boarded the flight for Munich. "How're the other, non-terrorism related theories coming? Wasn't there something about the skipper?"

_"He's hiding something, but we don't know what."_

"So have Gibbs chat with him. That'll make anyone talk. About anything."

_"Yeah, no kidding. We're just looking for at least one loose thread of evidence that we can start pulling at before we try that."_ There were a few seconds of silence. _"The only solid lead we have right now is that we're pretty sure the bomb was a distraction from something else. We're pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be that big."_

"Oh?"

_ "Abby found traces of JP-5 in some of the samples."_

"Ah, good old jet fuel." During her year as agent afloat, she made a habit of figuring out everything on board that could be used to blow stuff up. It was more a mental game to keep her engaged than anything else; the job was rather boring overall. "What of it?"

_"Abby's running simulations, but we think there was a container of JP-5 somewhere in the storage compartment the bomb was in, and the bomber didn't notice it. Right next door was comms. A couple of the ISs were on the casualty lists. Freiler's looking into just what they were up to."_

"And the Israelis?"

_"We don't think any of them had set the bomb, but haven't excluded the idea of them as targets. Ziva and her merry men are working on it."_

"And if that's the case, my 'friend' will know something."

_"What are friends for, right?"_

"With friends like mine, there's no need for enemies. Because most of my 'friends' seem to be our enemies. And speaking of my friends—real friends, this time—how's Siobhan?"

_"Working hard. Misses her family."_

"Sounds like deployment. I bet by now she's missing the Corps, too." Who wouldn't? "Well, I'm going to let you get back to work so I can say hi to Cunningham before my next flight. I'll see you tomorrow."

_"Hopefully with some news."_

"We'll keep our fingers crossed," she replied before ending the call, leaving out the part where she was pretty sure that this detour would prove to be a waste of time and NCIS's money.

That call taken care of, she put away her BlackBerry and pulled out her iPhone as she headed out of the KLM lounge and toward her gate, remembering as the phone struggled to find a signal that Jeff hadn't gotten an international calling plan. _Remember to change that when you get home,_ she thought as she again switched out the phones.

The call had almost made it to voicemail when Jeff picked up. _"What?" _he asked grouchily.

"Wow," she replied dryly. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed."

He groaned, a rustling sound of him sitting up in the background. _"Someone woke up hung-over to the sound of a phone ringing."_

"VFW?"

_ "Yeah. Until Bob kicked us out, about an hour after he was supposed to close. And then Kanten wanted to keep drinking after we got back."_

"And you agreed to that?"

_ "I didn't think a bunch of half-Asians could outdrink me."_

"Babe, I thought I've warned you about my brothers."

_"You did,"_ he grumbled. He groaned again. _"How's the travels? You can't be there yet."_

"Not yet," she replied. "Lay-over in Amsterdam. I'm going to have to take a side-trip to Naples before getting to Bahrain."

_"Now you're going on side-trips? Your job has all the fun."_

"Yeah. That trip's going to be all sorts of fun," she replied sarcastically. She sighed, not feeling like going down that road at the moment. "How were the boys? They behave themselves?"

_"When have your brothers ever behaved themselves?"_

"True," she acknowledged. "I asked DiNozzo how Siobhan's doing. He said she's working hard. Misses Zack."

_"Yeah, we all miss Zack Mox. Like we miss smallpox."_ Zack Mox had been the captain of the cross-country team at Annapolis when Jeff was a plebe; based on the stories they both liked to tell, to say that Zack had made Jeff's life miserable would be an understatement on the level of saying that the earthquake that hit Japan earlier that year was 'bad'. _"And you know how we pediatricians are. We don't let little things like broken bones keep us from doing our jobs."_

"Ha," Tomblin said dryly. "You took six weeks off."

_"I was on research,"_ he said defensively. _"I finished three case reports. And I've been taking extra credits for my MPH. Is your mom going to work today?"_

"Isn't it Sunday?"

_"Oh. Right. So I guess the rustling around is your parents getting ready for church."_

"Probably."

_"I guess that makes more sense than a kindergarten teacher going to work on a Sunday."_

"Probably."

_"Yeah."_ He paused. _"I wish you were here, Kim."_

"My family's not torturing you that much, are they?"

_"I'm not allowed to miss you for more than just protection from your crazy brothers?"_

She smiled. "I miss you too, babe. I hope this thing will wrap up quick, then I'll be right back there to rescue you from Thing 1 and Thing 2 and the north-going zax and south-going zax and the rest of Dr. Seuss' craziness."

He laughed at the reference. _"I should get going if I'm going to be joining your family for church, and you've probably got a plane to catch to Inner Mongolia or something."_

"Nope, just Italy," Tomblin said with a chuckle. "Tell the family I said hello. I love you."

_"Love you, too. Looking forward to you getting back."_

"Me, too." They said their good-byes just as Tomblin's section was called to board. She sighed, stood, and slung her rucksack over her shoulder.

Time to get some work done. The sooner that happened, the sooner she got to go back home and rescue Jeff from her family.


	25. Chapter 25

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 25**

* * *

Bahrain, 1700 (1400 Zulu), Sunday

In her time with Mossad, including the years she liaised with NCIS, Ziva David had faced murderers, terrorists, bombers, the bombs they made, her father, and many other challenges. She hadn't felt this kind of trepidation with any of those.

This was the feeling that was reserved for when she dealt with the widows and mothers and fiancees and girlfriends and other grieving females.

She steeled herself with a deep breath, then knocked on the door to the hotel room. It opened immediately, revealing one of NCIS's junior analysts, whose name was completely escaping Ziva's memory. "Officer David?" the analyst asked, making Ziva feel even worse for forgetting her name. "Ms. Mehler is inside, but first, can I see some ID?"

"Of course," Ziva asked, showing the ID card that gave her access to NCIS's building. The analyst studied it for a time longer than seemed necessary, given that she had already identified Ziva as someone she knew, before nodding and stepping aside.

"Right this way, Office David," she said, leading into the room.

Cynthia Mehler was exactly as one would expect of a captain's wife. Or ex-wife. Her already light hair was frosted to help hide the gray, her back straight as she sat up in a chair at the room's desk. She would have looked much more at place at the Army-Navy Club than government billeting in Bahrain; if it wasn't for the quick ponytail her hair was in or the box of Kleenex's at her elbow, there would be little indication that all was not well. "Mrs. Mehler," Ziva greeted. "I am Officer Ziva David. I am working with NCIS on finding your son."

"It's 'Ms.'," the captain's ex-wife replied. "Actually, it's Cynthia. That's a lot easier." She twisted the tissue she held in her hands and tucked an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear. "What can I do for you?"

Ziva took the other seat at the table without being invited, figuring social niceties could be suspended when speaking to a mother who was coming to terms with the idea that she would never see her five-year-old son again. "I need to ask you some questions about your divorce."

"My…" Cynthia Mehler began, then nodded. "My divorce. I figured when Wyatt was still missing that someone would be coming by to ask about that." She pulled another tissue from the box and briefly dabbed her eyes before twisting it in her hands as she had the previous one. "Truth is, it really was an amicable divorce."

"When?"

"Um, I guess it would be, well, a year and a half ago now," Cynthia replied with a frown. She began tearing at the tissue. "It was when he accepted command of the _Truman_." The twisting and tearing continued, small pieces of white tissue falling to the plain carpet under the chair. "I…I don't know how to explain…"

"How a marriage fell apart."

Cynthia nodded. She seemed to be collecting her thoughts for a few long minutes. "Do…do you have children?"

Now it was Ziva's turn to look down and began twisting something with her own fingers, in her case the new set of rings on her left ring finger. "No," she finally said. "We have only been married a few weeks." That wasn't something she would normally volunteer to a woman she had just met; talking to the distraught mothers always threw her off her game.

But the captain's ex-wife didn't seem to notice, or maybe just didn't care. "Barry and I met at USF," she said, and although Ziva didn't know what this had to do with the divorce or where their son might be, she decided to see where the woman was going with the story. "I studied early childhood education and Barry was in the NROTC program. We met in the sailing club our freshman year. I was always sailing growing up, and I think Barry joined because he was in the Navy." She smiled slightly. "And he was terrible at it. But he learned." Again, she seemed to collect her thoughts and figure out where she was in the story. "We got married right before our senior year, and then after graduation, we went off for his first assignment, and I was fully committed to being a Navy wife. The excitement of moving around every couple of years, the overseas assignments…" Her voice trailed off, her eyes far away as she remembered that time. "We didn't really think about having kids. He was busy with the Navy, I had my odd teaching jobs, we were moving around all the time, we were enjoying our social life, but as we got older, more and more of our friends were having kids, and, well, you know how that goes." Ziva didn't really know how that went; maybe she just always surrounded herself with people like her, who hadn't put much thought into the whole married-with-kids thing. But she nodded anyway, wondering if Cynthia Mehler would be getting to the point soon.

"Well, when he hit lieutenant commander, things were slowing down with the frequent moves, we were in Pensacola, which is a good place for kids, and we decided that maybe it was time." She choked up again, grabbing another tissue. A few deep breaths later, she continued. "All the right plans don't make it happen, though, and month after month…nothing. I thought maybe I had been on birth control too long, or something was wrong… We went to some doctors, and they said everything looks okay, but nothing was happening. So after two years of trying," she shrugged, "we stopped trying."

"And then?"

"And then Wyatt came three years later." Her smile was thin and her eyes again filled with tears. "Having a baby when for so long you didn't think you wanted a baby, and then thought you wanted one but couldn't have one… Especially later in life…" Later in life? She was only in her early forties, and having had her son five years before would have put her close to Ziva's age when Wyatt was born. As it was, Ziva was already older than she ever thought she would be and often had to deal with subtle jokes about her age from Cohen; she really didn't need the extra help in feeling past the hill.

But they had moved pretty far from the information Ziva came here for. "Did Captain Mehler not want a child?"

"Oh, no," Cynthia said quickly, taking a quick swipe at her eyes with a fresh tissue. "No, Barry loved Wyatt. More than he thought he would. He didn't know if he wanted kids at all; I think I had to talk him into it. But after Wyatt was here, there was not a second of hesitation." She began the twisting and tearing technique with the new tissue. "It broke Barry's heart to move out here away from Wyatt."

"Why did you divorce?"

"Life," Cynthia replied with a shrug. "I don't know what it was, really. We grew apart. We held onto our childhoods for so long that we didn't really grow up. And then Wyatt was born and we started to see things the way they should have been." She sniffed once. "I'll always love Barry, in a way, but living with him, being married to him… Those days are over."

"So there were not other women?"

Cynthia gave a short laugh. "No," she said, sounding quite certain of that fact. "No, philandering was never Barry's thing. Always too serious, too committed, to the Navy, if nothing else. Adultery is a UCMJ violation, and there was no way he would risk his career by having an affair." She shook her head slightly. "That sounds so cold. It's true, but also… Barry would never hurt me like that. He's too good of a man for that."

This whole conversation was making Ziva's head hurt. The woman obviously still loved her ex-husband, and it sounded like the man had no ill will toward his ex-wife, but yet one was visiting from Norfolk and the other commanded an aircraft carrier in the Fifth Fleet. She knew people grew apart, but there was usually some animosity associated with it. "What about your custody arrangement?"

"What about it?" Cynthia asked with another sniff.

"How did Captain Mehler feel about it?"

The captain's ex-wife shrugged. "He agreed with it," she replied. "It wouldn't have made sense for him not to, not with him moving to Bahrain and us in the process of divorcing. It was hard for him, I know that, but he said he saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He's retiring from the Navy in another eighteen months and planning on moving back to Norfolk, maybe working as a contractor on base so he could be close to Wyatt. He was always talking about that when he talked to Wyatt on Skype, that it wouldn't be too much longer until they would see each other all the time." She smiled thinly and shakily. "And they were both always so excited about that. Wyatt misses his father so much. That's why I agreed when Barry asked if I could bring him out here for the Family Weekend. I thought it would be so good of them…" Her voice trailed off, her body shaking in silent sobs as she thought about what that decision had cost her.

Ziva didn't know how long she sat there, awkwardly trying to think of something reassuring that she could say to a mother who would probably never hold her son again. She finally just patted Cynthia Mehler on the shoulder as she stood to leave, leaving the sobbing mother in the care of the NCIS analyst whose name was still escaping Ziva's memory.

Dealing with the mothers was one thing. Trying to figure out what to do about the crying was another altogether.


	26. Chapter 26

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 26**

* * *

Bahrain, 1900 local (1600 Zulu), Sunday

Abby Sciuto was experiencing the very familiar feeling of being both exhausted from a long day at work and over-caffeinated. Ziva was right; that smoothie from the morning was a gold mine of caffeine. So were the next four she had throughout the day. It had been quite the day.

Abby had enlisted the help of someone in the motor pool to give her a ride to Ziva's house—Tony and Ziva's house, she corrected herself; this whole thing about them being married was going to take some getting used to—and then stood and admired it for about as long as she could, which in her current caffeinated state, was less than thirty seconds.

She was sure Ziva either had some sort of sixth sense—well, in all honesty, it was closer to tenth sense; everyone had a lot more than the five senses than they taught in elementary school, once you factored in vibrational sense and proprioception and the others—for when her friends were nearby, or she had them all bugged. Whichever it was, she appeared at the door before Abby was done gawking. "You did not have trouble finding the house, then," Ziva greeted.

"Nope," Abby replied. "Your drivers are excellent at finding addresses."

"Tony's drivers," Ziva corrected gently. "I no longer work for NCIS, remember?" In reply, Abby wrapped her former coworker in a tight embrace. "Abby?" Ziva asked when she was not released after close to twenty seconds.

"I know you don't work for us anymore," the forensic scientist said as she finally pulled away, and she surprised herself with the sting of tears in her eyes. "It's just… Everything's changing, and…"

"It is okay," Ziva said gently as she guided Abby into the house. "Dinner is almost ready, and I have wine."

"Oh, no wine for me," Abby said quickly. "I still have to go back to work. Besides, I don't like mixing uppers and downers." Ziva gave her a questioning look. "Caffeine's a stimulant, and alcohol's a depressant," she explained.

"Ah," Ziva replied, returning the bottle of wine to the wine rack, one of the few things in the house to have been unpacked, judging from the boxes that were stacked up everywhere. "Then I will not have anything to drink, either. It is for the best. I have a video call with my director tonight, and it is wise to keep a clear a head for such conversations." She made a face, telling Abby that Ziva's relationship with her director hadn't improved any since moving to Bahrain. "Sorry about the mess," Ziva said, changing the subject and gesturing to the boxes. "We were supposed to unpack on Friday, but obviously, that did not happen."

"It's okay," Abby said cheerfully. "I had boxes in my living room for five years after I moved into my apartment."

"I hope these are not here that long, but knowing Tony, I would not be surprised," Ziva replied, rolling her eyes. She leaned over the stove and lifted a lid on a pot, releasing some delicious smells into the kitchen. "The rice is almost ready," she declared. "What would you like to drink, since we are not having wine? We have lemonade, Sprite, Diet Coke, and water."

"Sprite," Abby replied automatically.

"Are you sure you need more caffeine?"

"Ziva, Ziva, Ziva," Abby said in a mock-scolding tone. "How many times do I have to tell you how essential the caffeine is in my work process?"

"I know how essential it is," Ziva replied. "I have seen you try to work without it." She poured the Sprite into a glass with ice and handed it over to her former coworker. "I have a spinach salad in the fridge, if you are hungry."

"Starving," Abby replied, only realizing at that moment that she had skipped lunch. And possibly breakfast. She still hadn't figured out exactly the time zone situation, or just about anything else since Gibbs called to tell her that she was going on a field trip, other than that she had worked pretty close to twenty-four hours straight since she arrived in Bahrain. With the exception of bathroom breaks, of course. Those smoothies weren't exactly small.

They chatted as they ate their salads, which were delicious—baby spinach, walnuts, feta cheese, and what was, undoubtedly, a homemade dressing—and Abby filled Ziva in on the gossip she was missing in DC. Gibbs was vacationing with Gracy and the little Gracys, Palmer was dating Gracy's nanny, Dwayne was growing into a very competent field agent, the team had already burned through one probie and was breaking down the next, and McGee was spending pretty much all of his non-work time—granted, there wasn't much non-work time—with his new girlfriend. "But that's okay," Abby said quickly. "They're not all strange and couple-y. Not that you and Tony were," Abby added, just as quick as before. "You guys still socialized with your friends and came over to Ducky's for Thanksgiving and went out for drinks and everything." Abby frowned as she tried to get back to her train of thought. "McGee and Harley are kinda like that. I mean, we still go out for drinks after cases, and she comes along."

"And that is okay with you?" Ziva asked, a frown on her face as well.

"Well, yeah," Abby said honestly. She could understand why Ziva was confused; she wasn't exactly known for being okay with women who interrupted her time with her field agents. "Harley's nice and really smart and doesn't get in my way at work."

"Ah," Ziva replied knowingly. That was probably what Abby was most protective of; her friends could protect themselves, but her work didn't carry knives or Sigs or anything else that can be used to kill or incapacitate. Her work needed her to do that. Probably the 'incapacitate', instead of the 'kill'; she didn't like the idea of being the one to take another life.

They switched to discussions of Ziva and Tony's life in Bahrain over the main course, something delicious with lamb and rice and more ingredients and spices than Abby could identify, or probably even name. It wasn't until Ziva brought out dessert—a dark chocolate torte—that the Mossad case officer brought up the case that had brought Abby to the Middle East. "Tony says you have been running simulations of the crime scene," Ziva said. Even after knowing her for so many years, Abby still wasn't quite sure when Ziva was asking a question or making a statement.

"Right," she said, figuring that would be the safest response. She pulled out her iPad and opened the map app that she designed specifically for crime scene simulations like this one. It did wonders with explosions. Even knowing her programming skills, she was proud of the end result. "I had to rearrange things in a room a few times, but I'm pretty sure this is how it went down. The Semtex was right here, against the exterior wall. Whoever set it up didn't use much explosive; it was probably between 150-200 grams."

"Pam Am Lockerbie was destroyed by 312 grams," Ziva pointed out.

"Yeah, but planes are relatively easy to destroy with bombs," Abby said. "You have pressurized cabins, and when the higher pressure of the inside is allowed to meet the lower pressure of the outside, you get a vacuum, and boom." She frowned. "You're not going to report me to someone for knowing that, are you?"

"If so, I would have to report myself as well," Ziva replied. "Go on," she said, nodding toward the iPad as she took another bite of the torte.

"Right," Abby said. She also took another bite of the chocolate goodness before continuing. "This is really good, by the way."

"Thank you."

"So our bomb was pretty small," Abby continued. "There were some plastic crates right here and here. These didn't contain anything exciting, but these, or at least one of these, next to the wall with comms, had something flammable. Then our container of JP-5 was right here. Here's what the explosion would have looked like, if you could have seen it frame-by-frame, like in one of Tony's movies." She hit the start icon on the screen, and the bomb went off. They saw it blow a small hole in the side of the ship, followed by a pressure wave that ripped the plastic crates apart, then another explosion as the flammable crates detonated, and an even larger explosion as the JP-5 was ignited. When it was done, after about thirty seconds of screen time but only microseconds in real time, what had been the storage compartment was now much larger, on account of all of the openings that were now present in the bulkheads, decks, and overheads.

"That is quite impressive," Ziva said when it was done.

"But it doesn't tell you who did it," Abby said with sudden realization. All of that work, and all it did was confirm Ziva's theory that the blast got out of hand. If it wasn't for whatever had been flammable in that one plastic crate, and the container of JP-5, it would have caused a small hole in the side of the ship and maybe shaken everyone up a bit. It shouldn't have done…all that it did.

"No, it does not," Ziva confirmed. "But it does tell us where we should look."

"So where should you look?"

"Not with a real bomber." Ziva frowned as she thought about that. "I spoke with Captain Mehler's ex-wife this morning," she added as an afterthought.

"The mother of the kid that's still missing?"

Ziva nodded. "There was something…not right about the conversation," she said slowly.

"You suspect her of something?"

"No, not her," Ziva replied. "But I do think that this all has something to do with the captain."


	27. Chapter 27

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 27**

* * *

Naples, Italy, 2100 local (1900 Zulu), Sunday

Kim Tomblin's father was a little over six feet tall, and made it very clear every time he had to fly anywhere that he had never had a comfortable flight. As both his petite wife and just-as-petite daughter pointed out to him, airplane seats weren't comfortable for anyone. Especially after spending the better part of twenty hours in either an airplane seat or at an airport waiting to get into another airplane seat.

Special Agent Andy Dirk was waiting for her at the gate, his shield clipped to the belt around his now-generous waistline and a cup of what was undoubtedly not his first nor his last coffee in his hand. "Hey, Andy," Tomblin greeted as she tightened the straps of her rucksack, wondering, not for the first time, how they managed to loosen while in an overhead compartment of an airplane. She nodded at his expanding gut. "Looks like someone has been enjoying the Italian food a little bit too much." He had probably put on forty pounds since the last time she had seen him, when she arranged the Libyan's relocation to Italy in March.

"Yeah, thanks, Kim," he said sarcastically as they made their way to where the car was waiting. "You sound like my wife. The situation in Libya has been killing me. Since all that started, I haven't had the opportunity to hit the gym and have been eating far too many fast food meals at my desk."

"I'm sure riding a desk isn't helping that situation much."

"Someday, Tomblin, you'll hit fifty-five and they'll retire your ass from the field, too."

"You're assuming I'll last that long."

"That's true. You do have a tendency to get yourself in danger."

"Hey, I haven't been shot or blown up since I left the Corps."

Dirk chuckled as he lifted his weight into the driver's seat of the government car. "How's San Diego?"

"Warm, sunny, good surf, beautiful people, hardly anyone around who wants to kill me on principle alone. Can't figure out why I ever left."

"Because we all need the excitement of people wanting to kill us solely for the country we were born in?"

"Hell, Andy, I got plenty of that in the Corps." She drained almost half of her water bottle before getting down to business. "What did our Libyan friend say, other than that he only wanted to talk the least convenient person to talk to?"

"That was about it," Dirk said with a sigh. "I called him on the phone and he wouldn't talk to me, so I made this ridiculous drive and he said wouldn't talk to me. He seemed insulted that I thought he would."

"That sounds about right," Tomblin replied bitterly. She hadn't liked dealing with Hamid back when they struck the deal in March, and didn't like that she had to deal with him now. He was arrogant and smug and prejudiced against everyone who wasn't just like him. In many ways, dealing with Hamid was like dealing with her brothers.

She was ready to ask a follow-up question when her BlackBerry rang. Thinking it would be DiNozzo asking for yet another update, she was surprised to find that it was a personal call. "Rodriguez," she said into the phone. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

There was a pause on the other end as her former Corps buddy considered that. _"You're not at the orchard?"_

"Nope."

Another pause. _"I heard about Jack through scuttlebutt. Sorry, Tomblin."_

She took a deep breath. "Yeah," she replied softly. "We all are." Rodriguez, like most of her friends from her days in the Corps, knew both of her grandfathers and her whole crazy family from times that they would come down to Camp Pendleton to see her or just shoot the shit. "Who'd you hear that from?"

_"O'Shaughnessy. She called Cunningham a few days ago and heard it from him, and then she called me to ask if I've talked to you."_ No surprise that that would be Dr. Colleen O'Shaughnessy's first question, given that Tomblin has always told Rodriguez everything, from when they met during Officer Candidate School through two deployments and both of them leaving the Corps at the same time. _"I've been trying to reach you on your private number, but it's just been going through to voicemail."_

"Yeah," she said. "I'm a little bit out of my calling area."

There was another pause as Rodriguez considered that. _"You're investigating the carrier bombing?"_

"I knew you'd figure it out eventually."

_"So it's a terrorism thing?"_

"We don't know," she said honestly. "They called me in just in case it is."

_"Shit, Tomblin, I know your agency's small, but don't they have anyone else who knows anything about terrorists?"_

"Yeah, one would assume that, wouldn't they?" She was about to change the subject when she realized that she was on the phone with an actual, certified expert in explosives; after his time as an engineering officer in the Corps, he had joined a civil engineering firm that did quite a bit of demolition, got a master's degree in material science and engineering, and was in the process of training for his professional engineering certification. "Hey, Rodriguez, if you were going to blow a hole in an aircraft carrier, how would you do it?"

_ "Is this entrapment, Special Agent Tomblin?"_

She chuckled. "Hypothetically. Of course."

_"Well, hypothetically, if I was on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, I'd try to get my hands on some of that nuclear material and turn the entire thing into a nuclear holocaust, if I was either fucked-up enough to take up suicide bombing or somehow gotten myself far away from the ship. If I did happen to be fucked-up enough to want to bomb a carrier but not fucked-up enough to want to kill myself in the process, I'd probably get my hands on some C-4 and detonators and do it that way."_

"What would you do with some Semtex?"

_"Semtex? I don't know. Home repairs? Shape it into a ball and play catch with my two-year-old? Teach my kids about explosive safety? Wonder how the hell I ended up with Eastern European explosives?"_

That got another laugh out of her. "That's what our bomber used."

_"Well, then you're looking for someone in fucked-up category two and probably of the Middle Eastern terrorist extraction. Semtex is factory-tagged; you should be able to figure out where it came from." _

"It's not coming up in our database. How hard is the stuff to make from home?"

_"You get your hands on some RDX and PETN and a reasonably competent chemist, you could do it. Maybe that's what Cara and I'll do for her science fair—make some stuff that goes boom."_

"Yeah, the FBI tends to frown on suburbanites making their own explosives."

_"Yeah, figured. She wants to do something with slingshots and tension of rubber bands, anyway."_

"Can't tell she's the kid of two engineers."

_"Yeah, really. Another reason that the stuff isn't coming up in your database is that it could be old. Semtex has been around since the North Vietnamese wanted an answer to our C-4, but it's only been tagged since the nineties. The stuff's got a pretty long shelf-life, if you store it properly, so Semtex made before it's been traceable could still be good."_

"And our databases only go back as far as we've been using mass spec to identify explosives, so if someone made a batch in, say, the eighties and never used any of it until now, it would look completely new." She wondered how that fit into the case and filed it under 'things to think more about when done talking to the Libyan'. In the meantime, it had been far too long since she had talked to Rodriguez and she had him on the phone now. "So how's my goddaughter? And the rest of the Rodriguez clan?"

_"Taylor's doing well. Loves going to the big kid school with her sisters. And let me tell you, kindergarten isn't what it was when we were kids. She's got homework and everything."_

"I know," Tomblin replied. "I've got a niece that age, and my mom teaches it, remember?" Even though she knew that her niece Aya was only a few months older than Taylor, she still couldn't believe Taylor was old enough for kindergarten; she couldn't believe it had been five years since Iraq or five years since Taylor's namesake, 1stLt Cameron Taylor, was killed by a roadside bomb outside Fallujah.

_"The other kids are doing well, too,"_ Rodriguez continued. _"Mari's thirteen, if you can believe that."_ She couldn't. _"She's getting to the pretty expensive level of figure skating, but it keeps her too busy for boys, so I'm okay shelling out the money. Cara's playing soccer and tennis and Elea's into gymnastics and figure skating. I have no idea where these kids get their energy. Or why they have to play so many sports."_

"Think of the potential scholarship money out there," Tomblin reminded him.

_"Yeah, except between private school and paying for sports, I'm practically paying a college tuition for each of the kids already. At least Diego's still fairly cheap."_

"He's two."

_"And I wish he'd stay that age."_

"And if we ever got what we wished for, I'd still be at the orchard with Jeff and my family."

_"You didn't leave him there with them, did you?"_

"Eh, they're relatively harmless."

_"They're well-armed and trained to kill with their bare hands."_

"Details, details."

He chuckled and she could practically hear him shaking his head. _"Your funeral."_

"Well, I think it would be Jeff's."

_"Good point."_

They both laughed at the back-and-forth. "Hey, Rodriguez?" Tomblin asked. "Do you ever miss it?"

_"The Corps?"_

"No, you idiot. Prohibition."

_"Smartass."_ He thought about the question for a minute. _"I miss the camaraderie,"_ he finally said. _"You know, shooting the shit with everyone and all that. None of that is worth being in fucking Iraq and away from my family, though. Or watching our friends get blown up."_

"Yeah," she said quietly.

_"You okay, Tomblin?"_

"Yeah," she said quickly. "Yeah. Everything's fine. I'm just tired and jetlagged. You know how it is."

_"Okay,"_ he said, sounding completely unconvinced. _"How's Cunningham doing?"_

"He's doing good," she said. "Medically, he's really improving, and as far as all that psychological crap, he's actually doing better this time around than the first time he returned from Iraq. Everyone's so supportive, with everything." Her voice trailed off slightly at the end. She sighed and rested her forehead against the window. "Sorry. Like I said, tired. And not thrilled about working this case."

_"Is that what this is about? The community and the support and everything?"_

"No, it's not about anything. Forget it."

_"The support doesn't end when you take the uniform off, Tomblin. Why the hell do you think we're having this conversation right now? Why do you think O'Shaughnessy called me when she found out your grandfather died?"_

"It's just… It's different than we were all together."

_"Yeah. And if none of us had left the Corps, it would still be different. There aren't many people who got to spend their entire careers in the Corps with one company. We'd still be spread out around the world."_

"You're outside Chicago, O'Shaughnessy and Simple are in Bethesda, Anderson's in Belgium, Gorsuch's in Korea… Hammer, Jeff, and I are the only ones still in California, and I'm spending so much fucking time on the road that I feel like I don't belong anywhere." She sighed again. "I'm sorry. I'm being ridiculous."

_"Just don't do anything you're going to regret. Like rejoining the Corps. You got a good job that you're good at and a pretty sweet deal where they'll try to keep you with Cunningham as long as you want to be with Cunningham. You're not going to get that in the Corps. And all of that is worth some traveling around the world catching terrorists, which we both know you fucking love."_

"I'm not going back to the Corps, don't worry," she assured him. "Like I said, I'm just fucking tired and frustrated. Sorry to make you deal with all this."

_"With all of the bitching I did about being away from Ronnie and the girls when we were deployed, I think I had this coming. Hey, I've got a conference in San Diego in January that I was thinking about. How about if I just go ahead and register for that and spend a couple of days with you guys?"_

"That'd be good. We'll set up a karaoke night at Lion's Den and everything."

He chuckled. _"Sounds good, Tomblin. Sorry about calling so late. Or early. Or whatever it is wherever you are." _

She laughed as well, feeling oddly relieved about getting so much off her chest that she hadn't realized was there. "Thanks for your help with the explosives." They promised to talk more when she was done with the case and said their good-byes.

As she hung up, she took a deep breath and kept her eyes fixed on the landscape going by on the other side of the glass, ignoring the looks she could feel Andy Dirk giving her. She didn't have time to explain everything that was going on her life. She wanted to see how well he would keep it together if he just lost his grandfather, had to leave his significant other in the hands of his fairly-psychotic family (although she assumed that there weren't too many families out there as psychotic as hers), and had been traveling for the better part of twenty hours for a case he didn't want to be working. All things considered, she was thinking that she was keeping it together pretty well.

She pushed thoughts of her difficulties out of her mind, choosing instead to focus on the few words Rodriguez had said about the explosives with her case. They were dealing with generic Semtex that wasn't in the database; if Rodriguez was right, that meant that they were dealing with someone who had access to a chemist who could make it himself, or someone playing with some old explosives. If DiNozzo and company were onto something, they were dealing with someone who was creating a distraction that was hiding a bigger crime.

Whichever was going on, she hoped Hamid the Libyan knew something. If not, well, she probably wouldn't be able to keep it together as well as she was.


	28. Chapter 28

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 28**

* * *

Naples, 0030 (2230 Zulu), Monday

Kim Tomblin woke abruptly as the car turned onto a dirt road, not having even realized that she had fallen asleep. She groaned as she checked her watch. "I thought this was a two hour drive," she said.

"It usually is," Andy Dirk replied, not sounding happy about that. "We ran into construction about an hour ago."

"How long was I out?"

"Almost two hours," he informed her. "Didn't sleep much on the plane?"

"Too much on my mind," she said as an explanation. "I take it by the sudden change in road quality and the silhouettes of olive trees that we're almost there."

"Nobody ever said you're not perceptive," he replied. He pointed vaguely down the dark road. "About another mile."

True to his words, it was less than two minutes later that he turned down another dirt road, the headlights illuminating a small sign that read, "TARANGIOLI". Tomblin had no idea how old the sign was; all she knew is that it wasn't Hamid's family name. Nor the one he had adopted after his move to Italy.

The door to the large and very Italian farm house was open by the time Tomblin and Dirk had climbed out of the car, the light from the entryway backlighting the very large frame of Hamid the bomber, now Hamid the olive grower. "_Buongiorno_," he greeted loudly.

"It's _buonasera_," Dirk corrected grumpily. "Morning hasn't happened yet."

Hamid waved aside the words. "The Italians, their language makes no sense. Come, come in. My wife has the coffee ready. Americans do like your coffee, yes?"

"Oh, yes," Tomblin muttered, walking in the direction Hamid was gesturing, Dirk close on her heels.

The coffee, which was served by Hamid's teenaged daughter, who was fully dressed and made up despite the hour, was thick and Turkish and absolutely delicious and simultaneously exactly what Tomblin needed and the last thing she needed, if she hoped to get any sleep before Christmas.

Tomblin chatted with the daughter in Arabic for a few minutes about how she was liking life in Italy and her new high school, before her mother, Hamid's fourth wife, appeared and ordered the girl to bed. Then it was a few more minutes of chatting with the mother about the olive grove and the changes they had made to the house before she also went off to bed.

Hamid escorted Tomblin and Dirk out to the patio, into the warm Mediterranean night, where he lit a cigarette before taking a seat. "Jala does not like me to smoke in the house," he grumbled. "I think she has been watching too much western television, the way she has grown to speaking to me. I tell her, I am the man of the house and I can smoke in the house if I want to. But does she listen?" he took a long drag of the cigarette. "Women," he said on the exhale.

"Cute," Tomblin said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Cut the crap. While I appreciate the coffee, I didn't exactly divert my travel plans to drink coffee, talk Italian school systems with your daughter, and listen to you bitch about how much your life sucks because you married a woman twenty-five years younger than you."

Hamid tsked and shook his head sadly. "Such impatience. Nothing at all as women in my country are—"

"Yes, yes, Libyan women are quiet and obey their husbands. Except for your second wife, who I remind you of. We've heard it all before, and if it's all the same, I'd rather not hear it again. I'm tired of being compared to a woman you had killed because she didn't make your breakfast just like you liked it."

"There is no evidence that I had anything to do with my wife's untimely demise," Hamid countered mildly. He exhaled a stream of smoke. "And Mirah was an excellent cook. Do you cook?"

"I didn't come here to discuss my cooking, either, so let's get down to the fucking point." These were among the reasons she hated dealing with Hamid: he liked to play games and never said what he was thinking. He liked to see just how far he could go with the people sent to deal with him.

Well, Kim wasn't in a mood for games.

She glanced into the darkened house, where Hamid lived with his fourth wife and the youngest two of his eight children, fifteen-year-old Leylah and twelve-year-old Taban. The other six children, from two of his three previous wives—Mirah, the infamous wife number two, didn't bear him any children before her 'untimely demise'—were all out of the house, most with children of their own. While they were growing up, Hamid was too busy growing his 'empire' to pay them much attention; now that he was quietly 'retired' in Italy, he had all sorts of time to make up for it by doting on his youngest two children. "How is Taban?" she asked conversationally. "He must be asleep, since it's so late."

"Yes," Hamid replied, taking another drag from the cigarette. "He is young and has school tomorrow."

"I have a niece that age," Tomblin continued. "Reiko. Her twelfth birthday is on Wednesday." She leaned forward in her chair, her gaze intense. "She lives in Japan. I get to see her maybe once a year, twice if I'm really lucky. This year is supposed to the first time since she turned three that I'll get to see her on her birthday, and if I miss out on that because I'm stuck here playing fucking mind games with you, I will end this arrangement we have on the spot and have your ass, and the asses of Jala, Laylah, and Taban, shipped back to Libya, where you get the privilege of dealing with what you did." She doubted she had that kind of authority, but she doubted just as much that Hamid knew that. She held his gaze, wondering if he'd call her bluff.

He didn't. His tan face went white, his expression full of more fear than Tomblin had ever seen on a man. "No," he managed. "No, no, you cannot…" That was as far as he got in English before switching to rapid-fire Arabic about what exactly would happen to him and his family if they returned to Libya. Some of it was a gross over-exaggeration, but there was an element of truth to that. The things he did, even if he did do them in efforts of ridding his country of a widely disliked leader, wouldn't exactly help him win a popularity contest.

"Hamid," Tomblin interrupted. "Shut up." She was intentionally speaking English, even though she could keep up with most of his Arabic. "You're wasting my time again." This time he just nodded instead of saying anything further. She held his eye silently before continuing. "First off: you will start cooperating with Special Agent Dirk. This means you will talk to him over the phone, you will talk to him in person, and you will be nice. This was supposed to be part of the original agreement, but you've apparently forgotten that part of the deal."

"I just thought—"

"That you would insist on dealing with the least convenient person possible?" she interrupted. "I don't live in Bahrain anymore. I can't fly in every time you feel like being difficult. Do you understand?" He just nodded. "You can speak, Hamid. I need to hear you vocalize that you understand that you will be cooperating with Agent Dirk."

"Yes. I understand."

"Good. Second: you will stop being difficult. Part of this arrangement was that you would help us whenever we needed. It's been eight months, and this is the first time we're asking."

"The first time since the move to Italy," Hamid corrected. "Before the move—"

"What you did before the move isn't common knowledge, and I thought you wanted to keep it that way." Hamid didn't have anything to say to that. "Do you understand?"

"Yes," the former bomber said gloomily, sounding like a chastised child.

"Good. Now tell us what you know."

His eyes went from Tomblin to Dirk and back to Tomblin. "I did not speak to Special Agent Dirk before because I did not yet have information. It takes time to speak with my old contacts and determine if they have the right information I am looking for," he admitted. Tomblin threw her hands in the air, an action that was quickly followed by her rising to her feet and pacing angrily.

"Goddamn it, Hamid, why the fuck didn't you just say _that_ when he called you on the phone?" she asked. "You could have saved him two drives down here and saved me a flight into Naples. And now a flight _out_ of Naples tomorrow morning—_this_ morning—before I get the opportunity to _see_ Naples."

"Because I wanted to see you again," Hamid admitted. "It is typically quite entertaining for me when I do so. I did not realize you would be so angry about it." Tomblin just rolled her eyes; there wasn't much of a point to keep yelling at him.

"Just tell us what you found out," Tomblin said with a sigh, returning to her chair.

Hamid took another drag of his cigarette, appearing to be collecting his words. "Six weeks ago, a group of pirates was caught by your coast guard off the coast of Somalia. With them was a Palestinian man who had in his possession almost two kilograms of the explosive you call Semtex. The men he was sailing with did not care much for him and were only too eager to tell his story in hopes for leniency." That was one thing that hadn't changed in the Middle East in the last several decades; Jews may be public enemy number one, but ever since the Palestinians lost all their land and became refugees and nomads in everyone else's country, they became second class citizens that nobody seemed to have much heartburn about selling out. "He was apparently quite outspoken regarding his plans. He had heard that the United States would be training Israeli naval officers in the operations of your aircraft careers, and—"

"Decided to bomb the _Truman_?" Tomblin interrupted. Hamid shook his head as he lit another cigarette.

"No," he replied. "That would be too ambitious, even for an idiot Palestinian. According to the pirates who were caught, his plan was to bomb the ship that was carrying the Israeli officers to your aircraft carrier."

Tomblin frowned, trying to figure out how Semtex meant for an Israeli troop transport ended up blowing a hole in the side of the _U.S.S. Harry S Truman_. "How'd the Semtex get to the _Truman_, then?" she finally just asked. Hamid took another drag of the cigarette.

"That, I do not know," he admitted. "It was confiscated by your coast guard, and that is the last that I had heard of it."

"Okay," she said. She filed that under, 'think about this more later,' and asked her next question. "Where'd the Semtex come from?"

"That is a long story," Hamid warned. She waved impatiently for him to continue and had to wait for him to take another long drag from his cigarette and then exhale. "It was manufactured by a Saudi chemist in the 1970's," he began. "I do not know what his plans for it were, but it is said that he made around seven kilograms of explosive, maybe less."

"If it's been around for more than thirty years, how are we just seeing it for the first time?"

Hamid gave a strange version of the Indian head wobble to indicate his uncertainty. "I do not know."

Tomblin rolled her eyes, unsure if that was a true statement or not but deciding not to press it further. "Seven kilos were made—"

"Maybe less."

"Maybe less," she corrected herself, rolling her eyes again. "And the Palestinian had almost two. What happened to the other five kilos?"

Again with the strange head wobble. "Some would have been used for testing and some is said to have been destroyed after immersion in water." Tomblin didn't know if she believed that; most of Saudi Arabia was a pretty large desert. "But for the rest, it is unknown. And that is all I was able to find out about your explosion."

She understood a dismissal when she was given one and rose from her chair, indicating to Dirk that were done. "Thank you, Hamid," she said with exaggerated politeness. "Your cooperation was appreciated." She didn't know if Hamid had enough experience with Americans to grasp sarcasm, but didn't really care. The two NCIS agents filed back into the car and began the drive back to Naples, Dirk again at the wheel and Tomblin trying to figure out what to make of this new development.

She didn't know what was bothering her more: the fact that the explosive had been in American custody when it was used, or the fact that there were still five kilos of it that were still unaccounted for.


	29. Chapter 29

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 29**

_A/N: Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans (just a happy 4th of July to everyone else)! For those you partaking in the blowing stuff up portion of the holiday, stay safe and make sure you don't have anything flammable near your fireworks. Not that you'll have a container of jet fuel, mind you, but gasoline's even worse, so be careful._

_And enjoy the story (during which it's November, not July, but we can pretend)._

* * *

Bahrain, 0215 local (2315 Zulu), Monday

The one thing that Ziva wanted while dealing with everything going on with this case was a decent night's sleep. So, of course, that was the one thing she didn't get.

After dinner and dessert with Abby, the Mossad case officer drove the forensic scientist back to the lab, where Ziva was sure Abby would be working without sleep until they figured out exactly who set the explosives in the storage compartment and where Wyatt Mehler was. Then it was back to the office for a late-night call with Tel Aviv, during which Ziva confirmed that the ending of the Mossad-NCIS liaison and Ziva's move to Bahrain did nothing to improve her director's opinion of her. Then, less than an hour after lying down to get some sleep, she was woken by the ringing of the phone that was always on.

"David," she greeted, not bothering to look at the display. The only people who called that number were her operatives, none of which ever used the same phone twice.

_"Sorry to call you so late."_ One of the reasons she was so good at being a case officer was that she could recognize voices and accents, meaning her operatives rarely had to identify themselves over the phone. In this case, though, the flawless Palestinian Arabic didn't come from one of her operatives, but someone she had worked with on a mission that never existed and one of David Cohen's best friends from their days in the IDF. _"Our mutual friend suggested that I call you."_

Issac Rabinowisz's cryptic words, combined with the Palestinian accent, were enough to tell Ziva that the operative was undercover—probably in a refugee camp somewhere—and that identifying him or their 'mutual friend' should probably be avoided. "And why did he think we should speak?" she asked, matching his accent and glaring at the bedroom clock as the numbers changed from 2:17 to 2:18. If this was Cohen's idea of a practical joke, she would kill him.

_"He mentioned that you were in the market for explosives,"_ he replied, and immediately, Ziva was awake and listening.

"And you have found some?" she asked.

_"I may have,"_ he replied. _"I have been introduced to a supplier who has told me that he has three kilograms of explosive manufactured in Saudi Arabia decades ago by a private chemist and never used."_

"Three kilograms?" Ziva repeated.

_"Yes,"_ Rabinowisz confirmed. _"He had three more kilograms, which were supplied to a member of Hamas for use against the Israeli navy."_

"Successfully?"

_"No. The person responsible for the first attempt was taken into custody by the Americans."_

"First attempt?"

"_That is all that the supplier said." _This could be the stuff they were looking for, although the three kilograms didn't make much sense; less than a tenth of that was used on the _Truman_. And setting off a bomb on an American aircraft carrier wasn't exactly an attack against the Israeli navy.

But three kilograms minus the two hundred grams that were used on the _Truman_ meant that there was still a good amount of explosive left if the 'first attempt' wasn't the only attempt. They had to check it out. "Buy the remaining three kilograms," she instructed Rabinowisz. "We will put it to good use. Use your regular network to get it to me." She hoped he understood that to mean that she wanted him to give the explosives to his case officer to get to Tel Aviv for testing, to see if it matched the relative percentages of RDX and PETN of the explosive used on the _Truman._

"_I will contact the supplier immediately,"_ the operative informed her. _"You should be getting the package shortly."_

After the necessarily-cryptic phone conversation, Ziva knew that there was no hope for returning to sleep. She had to get in touch with Rabinowisz's _katsa_ to give the heads-up of the case and the incoming three kilograms of explosives, as well as ensure that the operative had enough money to make that transaction; call Tel Aviv and make sure that they knew that the analysis of the explosive was top priority and that she needed the results immediately; and figure out how to keep the midshipmen and their training officers safe for their trip back to Israel in a few days.

In case the 'first attempt' wasn't the last.

* * *

Tony DiNozzo let his phone ring for a few seconds as he studied the time on the phone, sure that something was wrong with the display. Either it had changed itself to Zulu time, or this call was just far too early. "If this marriage is going to work, Sweetcheeks, you need to learn how to tell time," he finally greeted.

_"Well, Tony, I thought you might be interested in hearing what I learned about the case,"_ Ziva replied testily. _"If it is any consolation, I have been awake for the last hour and a half."_

He sighed and wished he had coffee. "What've you got?" he asked tiredly. He hoped this was worth being woken at 0330.

_"If you are too tired…"_

"Stop playing games, Ziva. I'm already up."

_"I think the explosives may have come from a Palestinian refugee camp."_ She relayed an early-morning conversation she had with someone she refused to name—either one of her operatives or someone else somehow associated with Mossad, and he didn't want any details—about a supplier who claimed to have given a member of Hamas a few kilos of explosives to attack the Israeli navy. _"There are some inconsistencies,"_ she admitted. _"Abby's simulations are consistent with less than 200 grams of Semtex, not three kilograms, and an attack on an American aircraft carrier, while an impressive feat, is not an attack on the Israeli navy."_

"I thought you said that he said that would-be bomber was taken into custody."

_"There is that as well. We will know more soon. The supplier's remaining supply is to be purchased and transported to Tel Aviv for testing, to see if it is a match."_

"How long is that going to take?"

_"I do not know, Tony. Those working in Palestinian camps are hardly working in predictable conditions."_

Of course not. He sighed as he thought about this. The few days it will take to get the explosives to Tel Aviv and get it tested and compared to the sample they had in their lab will really only be a delay if they didn't match. If they did match, it would just confirm the good police work that they were going to continue in the next few days. And maybe Tomblin's conversation with her Libyan bomber would turn up something. Something that confirmed the news Ziva woke him up about or something that went against it; at that point, he didn't really care, he just wanted information. He needed this case to be over. And he needed coffee. But mostly he needed to get off this boat and back to his house before Ziva unpacked everything in places he didn't want them. Or got rid of all of his things.

Before he got a chance to say anything further, his phone beeped, indicating another incoming call. He pulled it away from his ear long enough to read the display. "I gotta go, Sweetcheeks. Apparently you're not the only one who doesn't believe in sleep. Tomblin's calling in."

_"Okay. I will leave you to that. I love you. Come home soon."_

"Love you too. And I'm working on it." He ended the call and accepted the next one. "You're lucky I'm already up," he said as a greeting.

_"Yeah, luck has nothing to do with it. I can't remember the last time I slept," _Tomblin replied, sounding no more thrilled about that fact than DiNozzo was.

"But you have some news for me."

_"In that category, you are in luck."_

"Where are you?"

_"On the way back to the Naples airport. I had a lovely chat with my friend last night. Discovered he's no more pleasant to deal with after midnight than at a respectable time of the day."_

"If it's all the same to you, Tomblin, can we just get to the point?"

_"He was able to figure out where the Semtex came from."_

"A would-be Hamas bomber?"

There were a couple seconds of silence on the other end. _"Shit, DiNozzo, if you could find this out with your Mossad connections, why the fuck did I just take a tour of the Italian countryside?"_

"Sorry. Just got off the phone with Ziva, who got off the phone with god-knows-who."

_"Well, Ziva's people are definitely on the right track. Just missing a couple of details."_

"I'm all ears."

She took a deep breath. _"The Semtex was manufactured in Saudi Arabia a few decades ago and never used, and no, I don't know why. Two kilos went to a Palestinian bomber, who planned on blowing up the transport ship bringing your Israeli friends to the _Truman_. Fortunately for the Israelis and unfortunately for him, the pirates who were providing transport were caught by the Coast Guard, who had no heartburn selling him out. Put everyone in custody and took control of the stuff that goes boom."_

"Wait a sec," DiNozzo said. "You're saying _we_ had the Semtex?"

_"Well, the Coast Guard did. Don't know what they did with it. And all of this is assuming that the Semtex my Libyan friend heard about is the same Semtex that blew a hole into the _Truman._"_

And suddenly, something went _click_ in DiNozzo's mind. "Holy shit," he murmured. As sure as if he was looking at a photograph, he saw the stack of files that Gabi had moved from the extra chair in the agent afloat office. "I gotta go, Tomblin. I'll see you in a few hours. Thanks for the info." He ended the call without an explanation and threw a cleanish shirt over his basketball shorts and ran for the agent afloat office. At that hour, hardly anyone was wandering around; he only had to shout for them to make a hole a couple of times.

In his rush to find the right file, he went by it twice before finally stopping on the right one. He tore it open, flipping through the pages until he found the NCIS agent report, and sure enough, just like Tomblin said, it was right there.

_Two kilograms of unmarked plastic explosive (? C4, Semtex) placed in NCIS evidence (Evidence B). Explosive placed in locked, fireproof container in storage compartment 3C-6E._

The storage compartment that was now a hole in the side of the _U.S.S. Harry S Truman_.

DiNozzo dropped the file from his hands, hit with a sudden and very concerning thought: did Agent McCaw cause the explosion by improperly storing the confiscated Semtex?


	30. Chapter 30

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 30**

_A/N: Thirty chapters and the story goes on... :) Thanks for sticking with it. Just to give you a heads up, I'm leaving for Kenya in a couple of days. Yes, the postings will continue, but no, they won't be at the same times. So continue to check in, or add the story to your alerts, so you don't miss anything._

_And back to the story._

* * *

U.S.S. Harry S Truman, 0400 (0100 Zulu), Monday

As soon as the thought that the explosion came from an accidental detonation of the Semtex the Coast Guard confiscated crossed DiNozzo's mind, he dismissed it. Semtex, like C4, packed quite a punch when detonated, but without a detonator, the stuff was about as hazardous as a piece of paper. Less so, actually—bricks of plastic explosives didn't cause paper cuts. Of which Tony now had several, on account of his quick flipping through the file.

He forced himself to calm down and read the entire file, which didn't take long. There wasn't much beyond what Tomblin had said: the Coast Guard searched the Somali ship—with probable cause, as the Coast Guard report emphasized and seemed to stretch after the fact, in DiNozzo's opinion—and found the Palestinian and his stash of explosives. The pirates were turned over to Somali authorities—DiNozzo had no illusions about how that would work out, as far as keeping them from the high seas—the Palestinian was wanted in Israel—and DiNozzo _did_ know how that was going to work out—and the explosives were taken to the _Truman_, because the Navy had more resources to deal with such things than the Coast Guard.

After giving the file the quick read-through, he was ready to get started for the day, and that meant that it was time for a campfire. Not even caring about the time, he called up his teammembers and Gibbs and told them to report to the agent afloat office. Freiler seemed confused, Gabi swore at him, and Gibbs replied with something incoherent before hanging up the phone.

Surprisingly enough, Gabi was the first to arrive in the office, wearing the West Point shorts and tee-shirt she probably slept in, and although DiNozzo was a happily married man—and Gabi was also very married, to a dentist back on base—he wasn't dead and he most definitely noticed the long and tanned legs at the end of those short shorts.

Freiler's arrival saved him from staring. "Oh, come on," Gabi said to the junior agent in disgust. "Do you _sleep_ in khakis and a polo shirt?"

"No," Freiler said, frowning as he glanced down. "I got dressed before I came in." He realized just then that neither of his teammates had done the same and blushed slightly.

Gibbs made his appearance at that moment in his USMC shirt and sweats and bearing four cups of coffee. "Oh," Freiler said when he saw that. "Uh, I don't drink coffee."

Gibbs shrugged. "More for me," he replied, distributing cups to the other agents. "What've you got?" he asked his former senior field agent.

"Two hours of sleep," DiNozzo replied. "Which is probably an hour more than Ziva got." Of course, she could be back to sleep by now, whereas he was still up having a campfire. He tried to figure out where to begin. The beginning was a good place. The beginning of that morning, anyway. "Ziva got a call from one of her Mossad contacts. He got an offer to buy three kilograms of homemade Semtex. He said the other three…" His voice trailed off as he tried to do the math. Maybe he just wasn't listening close enough to his wife when she was telling the story, but he could have sworn she said that the would-be bomber had _three_ kilograms of Semtex, yet both Tomblin and Agent McCaw's report said that the Palestinian was found with _two_ kilograms of explosive. The stories were too similar to be coincidence, and after ten years of working with Gibbs, DiNozzo knew better than to believe that anything was coincidence.

"Three what, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asked.

"You know, that's an excellent question, Boss," DiNozzo replied, still trying to figure out what it could mean that the numbers were different. It could just be a reporting error on behalf of whoever it was who called Ziva with this information—or the guy giving him the information—or he could have misheard his wife, or it could mean that there was still someone somehow associated with Hamas with a kilogram of Semtex and a desire to attack the Israeli navy.

Great, way to keep the case nice and simple, Mossad.

"So, there's a difference of opinion of how much explosive the Mossad contact's contact sold, but what everyone agrees on is that he sold some good old generic Semtex to a Hamas bomber. Said bomber hooked up with some Somali pirates who were in the wrong place at the wrong time and got caught by the Always Ready." He frowned. "That sounds more impressive in Latin."

"So, the Coast Guard."

"Didn't know they taught Latin at BYU, Freiler," DiNozzo joked.

"And they do at Ohio State?" the junior field agent blurted out without thinking. Gabi laughed.

"_In proelio verba,_" she said lightly. The three men all looked at her quizzically. "Loosely translated, them are fighting words."

"West Point?" Freiler asked, his face still bright red at his unintentional insult.

"French boarding school," Gabi corrected.

"Your parents must have been so proud that you decided to join the Army," DiNozzo observed.

"You have no idea," she replied.

"What happened after the Coast Guard picked up the pirates?" Gibbs asked, getting them back on track.

"Bomber got sent to Israel on an outstanding warrant, probably not with us any longer but I'll have Ziva check. Pirates were sent to the Somali justice system, probably back to being pirates. Two kilograms of plastic explosive were given to the Navy to deal with. Specifically, given to Special Agent Ryan McCaw, agent afloat aboard the _U.S.S. Harry S Truman_," DiNozzo summed up.

"That does not look good for Agent McCaw," Freiler said after the words had sunk in.

"Well, I don't think he cares much about that at this point," Gabi pointed out. "Given that he's dead."

"There's no reason to think Agent McCaw did anything wrong," DiNozzo stepped in. "The explosives were put in a locked, fireproof container in the storage compartment."

"The storage compartment that exploded?" Freiler asked, his blue eyes wide.

"Semtex can't blow up without help," Gabi pointed out. She turned back to her SAC. "Who knew about the explosives?"

"Uh, no idea," DiNozzo replied. He held up the case file. "Nothing in here."

"Skipper, XO, COB, and JAG," Gibbs said sagely. The three younger agents turned to him to watch him finish his first coffee. "There are only five need-to-knows in a criminal case aboard a carrier. Those four and the NCIS agent afloat."

"Okay, so since Agent McCaw is dead, we need to talk to the other four," DiNozzo announced as he rose to his feet.

"Uh, Tony?" Freiler asked. He held up his watch-bound wrist. "It's not even zero-five yet, and that's Bahrain time. It's before zero-two, ship's time."

"So?"

"So, uh, maybe we should wait to conduct interviews until people are awake?"

"That probably makes sense," DiNozzo replied, sitting back down. "Okay, once we get to a more reasonable hour of the morning, who wants to interview who?"

"Whom," Gabi corrected. She shrugged. "Sorry. French boarding school and proper grammar and all that. Forget I said anything."

"I usually do."

"Give Freiler the JAG," Gibbs said, getting back to DiNozzo's question. "Lawyers just piss me off. Stone, take the XO. DiNozzo, do you want the skipper or the COB?"

That was quite the question. Gibbs usually did quite well with the senior enlisted types, since he was at one point a senior enlisted type. They all spoke the same language. At the same time, the skipper was probably more high-yield and had the most evidence against him. He was also a father in an emotionally fragile state of mind, which was another thing that Gibbs understood and did well with. "I'll take the COB," he finally said. "Both Gabi and I have already given the skipper a chat and didn't get far. Maybe you'll have more luck."

"One question," Gabi said, looking up from the case file, which she had been reading. She clearly missed the entire conversation about interview assignments. "Ms. Sciuto's calculations are that less than 200 grams of Semtex were used. The report says that they put two kilograms in the storage compartment. What happened to the other 1.8 kilos? Or, if Ziva's numbers are right, the other 2.8 kilos?"


	31. Chapter 31

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 31**

_A/N: My first update from Kenya! So far, so good... many hours of traveling, but now I'm checked into my hotel and ready to get started at work this afternoon. I have all the fun, I know._

* * *

Bahrain, 0700 local (0400 Zulu)

Ziva had a headache, and she was blaming it entirely on whoever it was who blasted a hole in the side of an aircraft carrier. Or the person who sold him the explosives. Or anyone else even peripherally involved in this current case that had now completely ruined her weekend and threatened to ruin her entire work week as well.

After her multitude of phone calls into and around Tel Aviv to explain the situation with the bomber—and explain why Mossad resources were being used in the investigation—she relayed what she knew to Tony before Tomblin called to give an update. That brought her almost to 0400 and with little hope of getting any more sleep, so she did what she did every time she had a lot to think about: went on a long run.

Twelve miles and a shower later, she was back in an unusually quiet office and doing her best to take advantage of the time before Cohen and Dardik arrived to begin their usual routine of distracting her with their random comments, Cohen intentionally and Dardik through his complete lack of understanding of social norms. She chased a few ibuprofen tablets from her desk with water as she opened her email, and groaned at the very visible reminder that the _Truman_ case wasn't her only case. Actually, it wasn't even her case, at all.

She never appreciated how much a case officer did until she became one.

Response emails were drafted and sent, lines of accounting were confirmed, credit card bills were paid, notes were taken of things Dardik needed to look up or hack into, and a cover identity was confirmed, all before Cohen made his appearance in the office, sucking down one of his usual smoothies. "You are late," Ziva greeted him, handing over a fax that had come in the night before. "And I have work for you."

"Something local," Cohen commented as he scanned it. "I was hoping for more frequent flier miles." One of the protestors who had been arrested in Bahrain earlier in the year was just confirmed to be wanted for trial in Israel.

"You will still need to escort him in," Ziva pointed out. "They would like this one alive, if possible."

"That does make my job considerably more difficult," he reminded her. They were very well trained to kill and make it look like they were never there at all; it was much harder to be inconspicuous when abducting someone.

"Then think of this as an opportunity to prove to me how good you are at your job," she replied. "They would like him by the end of the week. I have started on your cover identity and alibi."

"Which is?"

"You are a graduate student visiting a friend who studies at the target's university," Ziva informed him. "As far as your alibi, David Cohen has been sitting on a beach during the day and enjoying the nightlife by night in Greece."

"I do like Greece," Cohen said with an approving nod.

"Your papers should be finished by this afternoon," Ziva continued. "You can start the field work at that point. Until then, I recommend you study your target. I am sure Avrum would be happy to help you," she said, nodding toward the still-empty workstation where her analyst was usually found. "Speaking of Avrum, where is he?"

"With Avrum, it is rarely easy to answer that question," Cohen said sagely.

Ziva rolled her eyes and returned her attention to her email before she remembered her early morning phone call and what exactly was said. "Issac Rabinowisz sends his regards."

A bright grin appeared on Cohen's face. "So he did find something," he said, sounding almost victorious.

"Yes," Ziva confirmed, wondering if stoking Cohen's ego was what he needed at the moment. Or any moment. "He believes he has a lead on the source of the explosive used on the carrier." She frowned as she studied her operative. "Did you have reason to believe Rabinowisz would have information, or did you send a blanket request to everyone you have ever worked with?"

"Issac was our explosives expert in our unit," Cohen explained. "He was also in charge of logistics, and I figured that his current case officer would be using him in a similar role. He has been trying to figure out the Hamas supply chain for explosives. He finds the guys who are dealing, figures out who is supplying them, and continues to follow it back until he either finds someone who can be taken into custody or loses the trail."

"And he is successful?" Ziva asked, honestly interested and already trying to figure out how she could take advantage of this knowledge. Cohen shrugged.

"He gave you worthwhile information, no?" he asked as a response. She had to admit, he did have a point.

* * *

NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs could do without videoconferences altogether, but there were some that were especially painful. Just about any that involved lawyers, the CIA, or telling someone that a loved one had died were at the top of the list, and although the conversation he knew he had to have didn't fall into any of those categories, he wasn't really looking forward to it.

He never was good with dealing with brothers of the women he was dating, even if they were lieutenants in the United States Coast Guard Reserve.

As soon as DiNozzo mentioned that the would-be bomber was picked up by the Coast Guard during pirate patrols, he had a strong gut feeling that the Coast Guard ship in question would be the one on which Lt. Mark Herzlich, the younger brother of one Dr. Sonja Gracy, was currently serving. There weren't too many Coast Guard ships currently patrolling near the Horn of Africa, after all. Sure enough, the Coast Guard report in the file was signed by the lieutenant in question.

At that hour in ship's time, it didn't take too much work to reserve a videoconference center, but it did take a little bit of time on the end of the Coast Guard ship to find Lt. Herzlich. _"Special Agent Gibbs," _Herzlich greeted. The sandy haired officer looked barely looked awake, and the deep yawn that escaped confirmed that. _"This is a bit of a surprise. I thought my sister said something about sailing in Virginia Beach over the weekend."_ He glanced down at his watch and frowned. _"Is it still the weekend in Virginia?"_

"Probably," Gibbs replied, not caring enough to check. He wasn't really surprised that Herzlich knew exactly who he was; Gracy was close to her brothers and tended to tell them more than Gibbs would have thought necessary. "I'm on the _Truman_. Need to talk to you about some explosives you dropped off a few weeks ago."

Herzlich's light brown eyes, the same color as Gracy's, widened as the sentence registered. _"Holy shit,"_ he said bluntly. He apparently didn't have his sister's tendency to swear in German. _"That's not what caused the explosion, is it?"_

"Someone added a detonator to give it a little help," Gibbs replied. Herzlich relaxed slightly. "Just need to confirm some stuff in your report."

_"Sure."_

"You delivered two kilograms to the _Truman_."

_"A touch less, but yeah."_

"A touch being what, exactly?"

The lieutenant shrugged. _"I couple of grams, maybe? I think the total was 1.98, but at that point, it's just splitting hairs. Either way, it's going to make a big boom."_

"Who's decision was it to turn it over to the Navy?"

_"My CO,"_ Herzlich replied immediately. _"Not that I disagreed. I'd rather not be near the stuff, if I can help it, and we just don't have the resources to test it. The Navy does. And NCIS."_

"You know who knew about it from the _Truman_?"

Herzlich frowned. _"I'm sure they have need-to-know protocols, but the only ones I know for sure know about it were the guys who were there when we brought it aboard—the NCIS agent, CO, and XO. Agent McGraw, I think his name was—"_

"McCaw."

_"Right, Special Agent McCaw. He didn't look too thrilled to have it aboard, and neither did the XO. The CO was making fun of them, telling them that the stuff's pretty harmless in storage. I don't know if that's true or not, but he didn't have any heartburn about taking it off my hands, thank God."_

"You know what it was?"

_"No idea,"_ Herzlich said with a shrug. _"I'm DEA in real life. I can identify a brick of cocaine from a mile away and tell you which cartel produced it, but we don't see much in the way of explosives. I think we found some on one patrol in my entire career, and that got sent right to the feebies for them to deal with. Was it C4? That's a plastic explosive, right?"_

He was right; he was completely clueless when it came to explosives. "Wasn't C4," Gibbs replied. "What can you tell me about the guy you got it from?"

Herzlich frowned at the change of topic. _"He said he was Palestinian,"_ he finally replied. _"Although he was with a bunch of Somali pirates. He didn't say anything as far as what he was doing with the stuff, at least not to us, but the Somalians said he told them that he was planning on blowing up an Israeli navy ship."_ That certainly fit with the stories they had gotten from Ziva and Tomblin. _"There was a warrant out for him from Israel, said he's a member of Hamas and has been implicated in some bombings in the Gaza Strip, so we turned him over to them. What they did with him is anyone's guess."_

"Anything else you can tell us about that day?"

Another frown from the Coast Guard lieutenant, the same expression Gracy wore when she was trying to recall something_. "I just remember thinking that the guy wasn't on the level,"_ Herzlich finally said. _"I mean, he says he's going to blow up an Israeli ship, so what the he'll is he doing a hundred miles off the coast of Somalia?"_ Gibbs knew the answer to that question and knew it involved the Israeli midshipmen who had been aboard the carrier, but didn't think Herzlich necessarily needed to know about that. The lieutenant's piece of the case had ended weeks before the Israelis had come aboard. _"After we locked him up in our brig, he didn't really seem all that broken up about it. Said the Jewish devil will be slaughtered no matter what we did to him, or some crap like that. Honestly, I didn't pay too much attention to what he was saying. Seemed to be the sort of extremist rhetoric that's always in the news. More bark than bite, you know?"_

"I know," Gibbs replied. With another kilogram of Semtex still unaccounted for, though, he wasn't completely sure that there wasn't a little bit of a bite to come.


	32. Chapter 32

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 32**

* * *

Bahrain, 0900 local (0600 Zulu), Monday

Ziva David was still in the process of updating Cohen's cover identity when her phone—her usual phone, not her encrypted Mossad phone—rang, Gibbs' name on the display. "Good morning, Gibbs," she said with cheer she didn't feel.

_"Need some details about your conversation with the skipper's ex,"_ he said, ignoring Ziva's greeting.

"Yes, it is a good morning, is it not?" Ziva replied sarcastically. She could hear Gibbs' exasperation over the phone. "What do you need to know?" she asked.

_"How'd she seem?"_

"From my experience, as a mother who is facing not seeing her child again."

_"Nothing suspicious?" _

"She seemed appropriately morose," Ziva replied.

_"You told DiNozzo you didn't think the skipper was on the level."_

"Yes." She tried to figure out how to explain it; despite Gibbs' trust in his own gut, he required a little bit more from the people who answered to him. Even Ziva, who no longer answered to him. "Ms. Mehler said that the captain often told his son that it would not be long until they would see each other often. She took it to mean when he retired from the Navy and moved to Norfolk—"

_"But you think something else."_

"Yes." She still couldn't figure out how to word her suspicions. "This is to be the captain's final cruise, with him retiring in eighteen months. His son was still quite young—"

_"Five's not exactly an infant."_

"But likely not old enough to grasp the gravity of his father's position," Ziva argued. "Why would the captain be so insistent that his son fly halfway around the world to attend a Family Weekend when he is still at an age that he requires constant supervision, does not understand what exactly his father does, and will likely forget all but the barest details of the event?" She had her own hazy memories of that age, waiting on the steps outside the family's home for her father to come home, not really comprehending where he had gone or how long he had been there, just that he was coming home and that she should be excited about that fact.

She pushed the memories from her mind and focused on another five-year-old, this one in that in between state where he could be dead or alive, much like that cat a physics professor once talked about. _"Parents want their kids to understand their jobs,"_ Gibbs said quietly. Ziva wondered how much a young Kelly Gibbs understood of what her scout sniper of a father did; she wondered how much Gibbs wanted her to understand.

"I just think it is suspect, is all," Ziva replied. "I do not know what any of this has to do with the captain, if anything at all," she continued. "All I know is that the Semtex was aboard the _Truman_—"

_"And that something about the skipper doesn't feel right in your gut,"_ Gibbs finished for her. They both remained on the phone for several long seconds of silence. _"I'm going to have a chat with Captain Mehler," _Gibbs said.

"Let me know how that turns out," Ziva replied.

_"If your gut is right, you'll have your husband back to you in time for dinner."_

* * *

The _Truman_ didn't have any interrogation rooms, which meant that the four NCIS agents had to improvise where they would be chatting with their respective marks. Interrogation rooms the world over were designed to make the people being interrogated feel uncomfortable and out of place, getting them out of their comfort zones in hopes that they would say something they ordinarily wouldn't. Unfortunately for Gibbs, aboard the aircraft carrier Captain Barry Mehler commanded, there was no place the man didn't feel comfortable. The best the NCIS agent could do was a conference room not far off the bridge.

"I'm recording this conversation," Gibbs informed the captain, making it very clear that this wasn't a question or request. Mehler merely nodded as Gibbs pulled out his recorder. "NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, speaking to Captain Barry Mehler, commanding officer of the _U.S.S. Harry S Truman_," Gibbs said into the small device, hoping he was using it correctly. He set it in the middle of the table and focused his attention on the man sitting across from him. "Can you tell me where you were around 0900 on Friday, ship's time?"

"When the bomb went off?" the captain asked. Gibbs nodded, studying the other man. He didn't seem to be on the verge of falling apart, but as somebody who knew what it was like to lose a child, Gibbs didn't put much stock in the lack of reaction three days after the fact. He was pretty sure he had been in denial for the better part of three weeks. "My son tripped over an ankle breaker," Mehler began. At least the story was consistent, so far. Gibbs had to give him credit for that. "I took him to Dr. Mox's office, but she wasn't in. When I called for her, I was told she had just gotten off duty. I informed the corpsman that I would be waiting with Wyatt in Dr. Mox's office until she returned."

"But you didn't."

"No," Mehler confirmed, beginning to sound irritated at what had to be at least the third time he had heard those questions. "I was called to speak to our Intelligence officer about something that was discovered in comms, I wasn't told what over the radio."

"Don't know many five-year-olds who are that great at talking to the doctor alone."

"Wyatt and I talked it over before I left," Captain Mehler replied. "I told him it was very important that he tell Dr. Mox exactly what happened. He said he would." The senior officer swallowed thickly. "I was halfway to meet with Lt. Yates when the bomb went off."

"When'd you find out that Wyatt was missing?"

"I tried to call down to the infirmary right away, but the radios were a mess. By the time I got to Dr. Mox's office, it was empty."

Gibbs nodded as if he accepted that story before abruptly changing the subject. "What can you tell me about Semtex?"

"The explosive?" Mehler blurted out. His eyebrows knit together before he asked, "Is that what the bomb was?"

"I think you knew that already, Captain," Gibbs replied. Mehler frowned, unsure of what to say to that. "You knew you had two kilograms of it on board."

"That was Semtex? I assumed it was C4."

There was no point in responding to that, so Gibbs didn't. "The Coast Guard lieutenant said that you seemed a lot more comfortable with the idea of it being on your ship than Agent McCaw or Commander Sanders were."

"Well, it's just a plastic explosive," Mehler said defensively. "The stuff's almost harmless without a detonator. I was an MP at the beginning of my career; I had explosives training." He frowned. "That's where this bomb came from? The confiscated explosives?"

"Dunno," Gibbs replied. "We can't find the rest of it to test." Mehler looked confused, so Gibbs explained, "Less than 200 grams were used in the bomb. Almost two kilograms came on board. We can't find the rest of it."

"I guess it would have blown up with the rest of the storage compartment," Mehler commented.

"Thought you just said you knew explosives." Mehler frowned at the statement and the almost hostile edge Gibbs gave it. "You should know that if two kilograms of Semtex were used, we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation. Your ship would be at the bottom of the gulf and everyone with it."

"I thought the bomb was big..." Mehler's voice trailed off, as if realizing he was almost saying more than he should. He shook his head. "It seems big, anyway."

"Big enough to kill fourteen people," Gibbs agreed. "With your son still unaccounted for." He began flipping pictures, noticing the way Mehler's adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. He stopped at the picture of Midshipman Spivak. "One of those fourteen was one of those Israeli midshipmen you welcomed aboard. You should know that Israel is taking this very seriously. Their prime minister has already informed our president that Israel hopes to try the person who set this bomb in their courts. And I don't think Israeli prisons would be a very pleasant place. 'Course, whoever did this probably won't be there long." Mehler swallowed again. Gibbs gave the captain a few more seconds to stare at the picture of Spivak before he continued with the pictures. "This doesn't look too good for you right now, Captain. You had access to the explosive, know how to rig a bomb—"

"But why would I want to bomb my own ship?" Mehler interrupted. "That doesn't make any sense! And in case you've forgotten, my son is still missing!"

Gibbs flipped another picture, this time revealing a shot of the missing five-year-old. He sat there for a minute without saying anything, letting Mehler study the image of his son. "It's not easy to be separated from our children," he finally said, adding just the right amount of empathy to his voice. "Never easy. Never gets easier."

"No," Mehler said softly. "It doesn't."

"Must have been hard, being so far away from your son."

"It was probably the worst thing in my life," Mehler said, his head moving in the barest of nods.

"Internet makes it easier," Gibbs continued. "You can talk to him, even see him."

"Sometimes I think that made it worse," Mehler said, his eyes still fixed on the smiling image of his son. "Getting to see him and hear him, but not getting to give him a hug... That was hard. At first, Wyatt didn't understand what was going on with the computer. He was only four when I came out here, and I don't know if you have any children, but four-year-olds have the worst perspective." Mehler finally glanced up, a sad smile on his face. "He actually got mad at me when I talked to him on Skype, thought I was hiding in the computer and refusing to come out and play with him. No matter how Cynthia or I tried explaining it, he couldn't grasp the concept that I wasn't really there."

"Getting close to retirement." Mehler nodded.

"Eighteen months," he said gloomily. "I thought I would return to Norfolk so that I could be near Wyatt, maybe even figure out where things went wrong with Cynthia and try to make them right, but now..."

"No reason to move to Norfolk if your son's not there."

"Right," Mehler agreed. He sighed heavily, his eyes again on the picture of his son. Noticing this, Gibbs turned the picture over. The action didn't get a response from Mehler; his eyes remained fixed in the same spot, now on the back of the photo.

"Where's Wyatt, Captain?" Gibbs asked, his voice low. Mehler's eyes shot up, an instantaneous look of panic quickly replaced by confused.

"I thought that's what you were here to find out," Mehler finally said.

"It is," Gibbs confirmed. "Divorcing isn't easy," he said, almost conversationally. He gave an ironic smile. "I've done it three times, and it still isn't easy. And I didn't have kids involved." Mehler frowned. "Your custody arrangement. How'd that make you feel?"

"What I felt didn't matter..." His voice trailed off. "It was the only thing that made sense," he said, his voice stronger. "Cynthia was in Norfolk and I'm aboard a carrier."

"Just 'cause it makes sense doesn't make it easy."

"No," Mehler agreed.

"You missed your son."

"Yes."

"Wished you could see him more often, could tuck him into bed."

"Yes."

"Even after you retire, you're still going to have to share him," Gibbs commented. "Doesn't seem fair. Your ex-wife gets him all the time now, and even after you give up your career and relocate, you never get him full time. You'll always be a part-time dad."

"I just wanted—" He abruptly cut himself off, then jumped in his chair when Gibbs slammed the table with his hand.

"You just wanted what?" he demanded. "To show your ex what it's like to not get to see your child? To keep him for yourself?"

"To have him!" Mehler exclaimed. "I just wanted to have him! This... This wasn't supposed to happen."

"Where is your son?" Gibbs repeated. Mehler cradled his head in his hands, his eyes fixed on the table.

"My apartment in Bahrain," Mehler finally said. "My housekeeper is looking after him."

"How did he get there?"

"Boat. Thursday night, during one of the routine trips back and forth. I told the driver that he was too much of a handful and that his mom would be there at the pier for him." He massaged his temples, his eyes closed. "The explosion wasn't even supposed to blast a hole in the side of the ship, just set off the sensors and cause an evacuation of the dependents back to base..." He looked up and looked at Gibbs. "I don't understand what went wrong."

"You were stupid," Gibbs said flatly. "You didn't want to wait eighteen months to see your son. Now you'll never see him again." He rose and pulled out his handcuffs. He stopped and looked down at the broken man who was just fully realizing the weight of his failure. "Rule one of setting a bomb, Captain: check where you're setting it. You messed up and missed the barrel of JP-8 and the trunk of flammable material, and fourteen people died. All because you couldn't wait eighteen months to be with your kid again."


	33. Chapter 33

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 33**

* * *

Bahrain, 1000 local (0700 Zulu), Monday

The NCIS team decided to keep Captain Mehler's arrest quiet until they could confirm his story, and that's what they set out to do. After much debating between the four agents, Stone and Freiler stayed behind on the _Truman_ to work out the details of things that had happened aboard, and Gibbs and DiNozzo got on a boat headed for Bahrain. DiNozzo didn't know he was supposed to feel about the moment; it was strangely nice and nostalgic to be working with Gibbs again, but the fact that it was his former supervisory field agent who broke the case and got the confession hurt a little, like he couldn't solve the case on his own.

He pushed the thought aside as he focused on more important issues, like how to sit in the boat to keep it from capsizing, which would be the last thing he wanted to do before they finished up this case. Yes, it had been Gibbs who had gotten the confession, but that was because DiNozzo had assigned Gibbs to interview the captain and that interview had just happened to fall after they had enough pieces of the puzzle to figure out what the picture was supposed to be.

He was team leader and was doing a good job at it, damn it.

The boat ride seemed longer than it should have been, but it was over soon enough, and for the first time since Friday afternoon, DiNozzo was back on solid ground. The _Truman_ was so large that it didn't rock and no sea legs were required, but at that point, it was a matter of principle. He wanted to be back on Bahrain, and now he was back on Bahrain.

He pulled out his phone to give Ziva a heads-up that he was back on the island, but before he had the opportunity to even get to the phone function of his phone, Gibbs took it from his hand. "Work first. Then what you do with your time is your business."

"What I do with my time _is_ my business," DiNozzo argued as he grabbed the phone back. "I don't work for you anymore." He stuffed the phone back into his pocket without calling anyone.

Haven Helkowski, the analyst who had been baby-sitting Cynthia Mehler since they determined that five-year-old Wyatt was missing, was waiting in a Charger, the captain's ex-wife sitting in the front seat. "You know where Wyatt is?" Cynthia asked eagerly as Gibbs and DiNozzo stepped into the back.

"We have a lead on where he is," DiNozzo replied, careful not to get her hopes up too much, in case her ex-husband was lying about where Wyatt was. He didn't have a reason to be lying, not while he was in custody, but people always had a tendency to do things they didn't have reasons to be doing. Like kidnapping their kids and setting a bomb to cover it up when they only had eighteen months left before retirement.

The ride to Captain Mehler's apartment was quiet, Cynthia Mehler silently twisting a cloth handkerchief in her hands and the three NCIS employees not speaking as they all hoped that this would all soon be over and with a positive resolution. DiNozzo, more to fill the time than anything else, began scrolling through the apps on his phone. It seemed like the only one he didn't have was a 'solve this case' app. He wondered if Abby could make him one.

And it seemed just like that, they were at the apartment complex. "Stay in the car with Ms. Mehler," DiNozzo ordered Helkowski.

"I need—"

"We need to make sure it's safe first," Gibbs interrupted the anxious and nervous mother, more understanding in his voice than DiNozzo could ever recall hearing. "We'll be back as soon as we know anything." The skipper's former wife managed a nod, her fingers beginning to work overtime at the twisting of that handkerchief.

The two NCIS agents waited until they were out of view of the car when they, simultaneously and without any spoken communication, pulled their weapons and continued on toward Captain Mehler's apartment. There was no reason to suspect that the captain had set a trap, but up until Friday morning, they wouldn't have thought that there would be a reason for the captain to set a bomb on his own ship. People were unpredictable. People also did stupid things.

They arrived at the door to Captain Mehler's apartment and both stopped and looked at each other. "How do you want to do this, Boss?"

Gibbs shook his head. "Your case."

That's right. It was his case. DiNozzo turned to look at the apartment door before turning back to his former team leader and finally shrugged. "Knock on the door and see who answers?" Gibbs gave a half nod of agreement, and DiNozzo took a deep breath before raising his knuckles to the door.

Only a few seconds later, the door opened to reveal a middle-aged Arab woman, her hair covered and her clothing, while modern and Western, extending from wrists to ankles and everywhere in between. DiNozzo was sure that this was the housekeeper Mehler had said was watching his son. "Yes?" she asked hesitantly. DiNozzo discretely holstered his Sig as he pulled his credentials.

"Naval Criminal Investigative Service," he said in Arabic. At least, he hoped that was what he had said. A momentary look of confusion crossed the woman's face, gone as she studied the shield and credentials in front of her. "Is Wyatt Mehler here?"

"Yes, of course," she said, also speaking in Arabic. Although he wasn't that great at accents, it sounded similar enough to the accents he had been hearing on a daily basis in the couple of months he had been living on the island to suspect that she was a native of Bahrain, which fit with the housekeeper theory. She moved aside as she opened the door to grant them entrance, and right there in the living room was a small five-year-old amidst a pile of Legos.

DiNozzo explained the situation as he best he could to the housekeeper, hoping he had gotten all the pertinent points across, as Gibbs crossed the room to speak to the boy. He spoke in a low tone, too quiet for DiNozzo to hear, but at Wyatt's nodding, DiNozzo could only assume that he was being told that he would be taken to his mother.

DiNozzo had never seen so much patience from Gibbs as when the man was dealing with children; not for the first time, DiNozzo wondered at the injustice in the world that a man who was so clearly meant to be a father had his child taken from him. With this kid, Gibbs waited while he found his shoes and put them on in that way that children did, and then proceeded to talk about how he was learning to tie his shoes as he fumbled with the laces. In the end, he couldn't get the orders of bunnies and trees and rabbit holes right and allowed Gibbs to tie the shoes for him.

Cynthia Mehler was waiting outside the car, her expression an odd mixture of anguish and hope as she waited for them to reappear, and as soon as they did, that expression changed to one of completely unrestrained joy. "Wyatt!" she cried out, running forward.

"Mommy!" Wyatt returned. He allowed himself to be swept into his mother's arms as she held him and sobbed, but it wasn't much longer before he tried to squirm away. For her, she had gotten her son back from the dead, but for him, he had a few days of playing with the toys and housekeeper in his father's apartment, not knowing that anything was wrong.

It was a private moment, but for some reason, DiNozzo couldn't look away. There was something about parents and children he didn't understand and didn't know if he ever would, the idea that something so small and so helpless could have so much power over an adult, could leave one reduced to tears for days, blow up a section of a boat, take the blame for a murder, or steal millions from the Pentagon; the loss of one could drive to suicide, to dedication in all other aspects of life, could leave a grown man drinking bourbon and building boats in a basement. Maybe it was because he didn't see that in his own parents; his mother had been sick for most of his memories of her, and he was still fairly certain that his father had no interest in ever having children in the first place. In moments like these, in seeing how a parent who loved a child interacted with him, hugged him, wept for him, he couldn't help but feel that he had been cheated out of something no one had the right to cheat him out of.

Not for the first time since he and Ziva started dating—more frequently now that they were married—he wondered about that interaction, about how parents and kids were supposed to be around each other. He certainly didn't have a storybook relationship with his parents, and Ziva's was so far away from normal it was barely recognizable. With pasts like those, it was no wonder they never gave any serious thought to bringing a kid into the mix.

But maybe they had seen so much abnormal to know how to get close to normal.


	34. Chapter 34

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 34**

_A/N: For everyone who has read _Falling on Unyielding Ground_ and had questions about a certain spoiler, well... :)_

* * *

Bahrain, 1230 local (0930 Zulu), Monday

It was right about the time that Ziva's rumbling stomach was encouraging her to get up from her computer and eat something that her phone rang, Tony's number on the display. "Hello, Tony," she greeted. "Anything new with the case?"

"_Well, yeah,"_ Tony replied, the slightly guilty tinge to his voice making her raise an eyebrow. _"Quite a lot, actually. It's done. I've been working on reports for the last two hours. You want to grab lunch?"_

"You are in your office?" Ziva asked with a frown.

"_Right below you,"_ he confirmed.

"I will be right down."

"_I'll unlock the door for you."_ They agreed when they both took over their respective offices that barging in on each other through the stairwell that connected his first-story office to her second-story office probably wouldn't be a good idea, not with the sensitive nature of both of their jobs, and both kept their stairwell doors locked to prevent such a thing. It was the easiest way to get from one place to the next, though, so they still regularly used the Clue-like secret passage; each just had to give the other a heads-up before hand, to unlock the door and hide anything potentially damaging. And, in Ziva's case, try to send Cohen away before Tony arrived as to prevent having to listen to the two of them discuss movies or comic books.

It was less than two minutes later that Ziva had finished everything in her office and was standing in Tony's, which looked the same as it always did after a big case, Tony's desk covered in piles of paper that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. She had no idea how he managed that; he hadn't even been there to accumulate paperwork.

He was on his feet before she could process that thought further, his arms around her waist and his lips on hers. "Hi," he greeted as they separated, his most charming grin on his face. "You ready for lunch?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"Home," he replied automatically and emphatically. She caught the look in his eye and had to admit that he had a great point.

They didn't get food until they took care of other things that had been on hold during the case—other than the unpacking—and ended up eating leftovers—which got grumbles from Tony—while leaning over the sink. "So how did you do it?" Ziva finally asked.

"Fed him to the Gibbs," Tony replied, his mouth still full of lamb. Ziva rolled her eyes at him and he swallowed. "He sang like a parrot."

"I thought it was canaries that sang?"

"Nope, parrots." Ziva frowned. "Just kidding. It's canaries."

"And you wonder why I still do not understand American idioms." He grinned over at her with a mouth full of food. "And I did not need to see that," she said, pushing his face away. "I need to use the bathroom. I will be right back."

She wasn't surprised in the least to find that Tony had dumped the contents of his go-bag on the bathroom to deal with later—or, in a much more likely scenario, for Ziva to deal with after she got tired of living among his clutter and started to straighten it out—but what was surprising was the near-empty prescription bottle on the floor next to the pile of stuff from the small duffle. Ziva bent down and picked it up, trying to remember the last time either of them was on any sort of medication, other than her birth control.

And apparently, the answer was, when they were on doxycycline for prophylaxis against the anthrax they might have been exposed to after Burley was killed.

Ziva, like Cohen, Freiler, Gibbs, McGee, and Dr. Jeff Cunningham, had been prescribed one month of doxycyline and a booster of the vaccine—Tomblin only needed the doxycycline, having had the good luck of getting her most recent booster a month previous—but Tony, despite being the only one in the group who had suffered an actual illness from bioterrorism, never finished the anthrax vaccine series, declaring after the first dose that there was no way anthrax would be more painful than the vaccine. He was given the second shot of the series and prescribed two months of doxycycline, with stern instructions from Cunningham—and echoed by both the surgeon who prescribed the shot and Ziva—that he needed to get all the shots this time. No surprise, he couldn't even manage to finish the entire prescription of antibiotics; there were still three pills left, despite the fact that they should have been gone more than three weeks ago.

As soon as the bottle hit the trash can, Ziva was struck with a strange realization—more of a vague memory, actually—of hearing a story of a fellow soldier in the IDF who ended up pregnant because nobody told her that antibiotics make birth control stop working. And immediately after that came the second realization: she hadn't had her period since moving to Bahrain.

She made her way back to the kitchen, still trying to figure everything out, to find Tony scraping clean the pan that once contained the chocolate torte. "Hey," he said as she approached, no clue in his mind what was going through hers. "You know, we kinda got married without having, uh, one of those big talks. You know, the 'do we want to have kids?' talk."

"Tony—"

"I know what you're going to say," he said, holding up a hand and not giving her a chance to speak. "You're going to say, 'you are a big child already, Tony.' And, well, that's kinda true."

"_Tony—_"

"And kids make people go crazy," he continued, still not letting her have a word in edgewise. "I mean, look at what just happened with Captain Mehler," she still didn't know what had happened with Captain Mehler, "or with any of a dozen cases we've worked before, or even Gibbs. People just get a little off when it comes to progeny."

"I did not know you knew what 'progeny' meant," Ziva said dryly.

"I'm a surprise wrapped in an enigma, Ziva." That sounded familiar, but she couldn't place it and wasn't going to get into a discussion of which movie it was from. "It's kinda up to you, since you're the one who'd have to carry a parasite for nine months, because we're not going to pull an Arnold Swartzenegger from _Junior_, but, well, I guess I'm not opposed to the idea. The kid idea, not the _Junior_ idea." And finally he stopped talking long enough for Ziva to speak.

"I think I might be pregnant," she said in a rush, the words sounding strange and foreign to her own ears. Her eyes followed the descent of the fork as it dropped from Tony's hand in his surprise, landing with a large _clank_ on the pan.

"You're what? You think…" He stopped and frowned. "Are you sure?"

"No, I am not sure," she snapped. "That is why I said _I think I might be_."

"But I thought you've been on birth control since you were sixteen."

"I have," she confirmed, finally taking a seat on the barstool. "When we were on antibiotics for the anthrax, it might have affected my birth control."

"Might have? Wouldn't you know these things? How has this not come up in twenty years?"

"Any other time I have been on antibiotics, I have either been too sick or too injured to even consider having sex," she explained.

"Until you were put on it 'just in case'," he said with dawning realization.

"Yes."

"When?"

"It would have had to be when I arrived in Bahrain."

"Oh, yeah…" She rolled her eyes at the look of fond recollection on her husband's face and waited the required amount of time necessary for him to return to the conversation. "So… Now what? I guess the first thing is to find out if you really are knocked up, but that'll take about as long as it takes to drive to the NEX, drive back, and pee on a stick, so… What comes after that?"

"You are really not opposed to the idea?"

"I'm really not." The fork had magically found its way back into his hand and was now being twirled between his fingers. "I could teach it how to play basketball."

"It could be a girl."

"That's fine. Basketball's a girl's sport, too." He appeared to be thinking things through, which she knew from experience could take a few minutes. "You'd have to give up field work awhile."

"I am not supposed to be spending much time in the field already." Tony snorted.

"Right, and you follow that rule as well as I follow the 'watch your cholesterol' rule." His eyes widened in realization. "If we have a kid, does that mean I need to start watching what I eat?"

"That depends on if you want to see it graduate high school or not."

He groaned. "Do you realize I'll be close to sixty when it graduates high school?"

"If it takes after you, it might be later."

"Ha. I graduated at eighteen. Could be because they were sick of me, but they still gave me a diploma." They stared at each other for a long minute. "So, just so I'm clear... We're doing this?"

"I guess we are."


	35. Chapter 35

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 35**

* * *

Bahrain, 1900 local (1600 Zulu), Monday

Special Agent Kim Tomblin had rarely felt the sense of relief as acutely as when her final plane landed in Bahrain, glad that the whirlwind tour of the world's airports was finally over. Until she had to go back and do it again to get back to her family's orchard, of course, a trip she was both looking forward to and dreading.

She turned on her phone as the plane was still taxiing toward the gate, waiting for the BlackBerry to figure out where it was and pick up on a cell phone signal, and as soon as it did, it beeped to indicate a voice mail. "Great. Thanks, DiNozzo," she muttered as she brought the device to her ear to listen to what the new SAC in Bahrain had to say.

"_Hey, Tomblin,"_ the message began, _"you're not going to be very happy with me, but it was the captain and we've already made the arrest. Had the kid hidden in his apartment. Mom and kid have been reunited. We can still use your help with some other things. Give me a call when you get this."_

She released a stream of muttered profanities that earned her a look of surprise from the man sitting next to her. She ignored him as she brought the phone up to her ear to return the call. _"Hey,"_ DiNozzo greeted, sounding both exhausted and overwhelmed with that one syllable. _"Did you get my message?"_

"Yeah," she replied, hoping her tone expressed her displeasure. "Do I get to say that I told you so?"

"_You're going to have to talk to Vance about that,"_ he informed her. _"Freiler's waiting for you at the airport. We're having a working dinner at Casa DiNozzo and David to tie up the loose ends."_

"Okay," she acknowledged with a sigh. There was no use arguing with him; she doubted that there would be a flight back in her direction until at least the morning anyway. At least she would get a free dinner that didn't come out of an airport and a chance to catch up with some old friends and coworkers for her troubles. "I'll see you in a bit."

DiNozzo wasn't lying when he said Freiler was waiting; Tomblin found her lanky former teammate just on the other side of security, smiling with those oddly perfect teeth. "You're a federal agent," she greeted. "You can wait as close to the gate as you want."

"That seems like an odd way to abuse the position," he replied as they headed out to the waiting car.

"It's not abuse," she informed him. "It's part of how we get paid to do this job. Because we both know the paycheck itself is nothing to write home about." He smiled at that but didn't reply; complaining about the job was probably a sin or something. Not that it mattered much to her; after the things she had done in the Corps and since, she figured if there was a hell, she'd not only be going, but would be driving the bus. She was pretty sure Kanten—or was it Karsten?—had said exactly that when he found out her current living situation. She stifled a sigh at the thought and changed the subject. "How's Bryn? She have the kid yet?"

"Any day now," he replied. He glanced over at her out of the corner of his eye. "We haven't picked out a name for sure yet, because we want to see which one would fit her best. Uh, don't take this the wrong way, but one of the names we're considering is Kimberly."

She thought for a few seconds about how she felt about that, then discovered she didn't have any strong feelings either way. A name was a name, and just because she had one that the Freilers might like for their daughter didn't really have much to do with her. "At least she'll have the blond hair and blue eyes for it," she replied. In her mind, she never fit the picture she had of the name. "And don't insert an extra 'e' right before the 'y' just to be different. It's a pain always having to spell out my first name." She still—as did Kevan—occasionally scolded their mother for using nontraditional spellings. Kanten and Karsten scolded her for the use of nontraditional names; she always replied to both complaints by saying that she wanted them to be unique. Kim thought they were all unique enough as it was without adding in people misspelling their names.

Freiler caught her up on the case and the conclusion in the drive to DiNozzo and David's house, but Tomblin was barely listening, her attention on the scenery outside the car and how eerily familiar it all was. As it should have been; it was less than three months ago that she was living there, but so much of her life had changed in those months that it no longer felt like the same life. It was the same feeling she had upon returning to the States after both of her deployments with the Corps, and it was no more comfortable now than it had been then.

The house that the new SAC and new Mossad case officer were sharing was nice, and Tomblin had lived in Bahrain long enough to know just how much 'nice' was costing them in rent. She had talked about that with DiNozzo when he was still house hunting, and the place he got confirmed her suspicions that one or both of them was living off some sort of trust fund. Or that Mossad case officers got paid a hell of a lot better than NCIS field agents.

Although DiNozzo had said that it was a working dinner, Bryn Freiler and the three little Freilers were running around DiNozzo's back yard—well, the kids were running, Bryn was supervising—and an unfamiliar man who, deductive reasoning would dictate, was likely the dentist Gabi al-Sheik had married, was sitting near the grill chatting with Ziva. The rest of the players—Ziva, DiNozzo, Gibbs, Abby Sciuto, and Gabi—were somewhat expected.

"Look what I found at the airport," Freiler announced as they approached the group. The greetings from everyone were pretty much exactly as she would expect from each: Bryn stood to give her a hug, despite the fact that she looked like she could go into labor at any minute; DiNozzo and Gibbs both held up their bottles of beer as a wave of hello; Abby merely nodded; al-Sheik—Stone, she corrected herself—gave a small wave; and Ziva handed off control of the grill to help Tomblin with her rucksack.

"Would you like anything to drink?" she asked as she carried the MARPAT bag into the house. She closed the door behind them, which told Tomblin that this wasn't a routine trip in for drinks.

"Beer seems to be the drink of choice," Tomblin replied, noting as she said so that Ziva had a water bottle in hand. The secrecy and lack of alcohol on behalf of the Mossad officer sent warning alarms through Tomblin's head; she was sure that there was going to be a clandestine mission leaving shortly. "So what's the situation that DiNozzo was being intentionally vague about?"

Ziva frowned as she popped the cap off the bottle before handing it over, doing so with her left hand, which gave Tomblin a view of not only the engagement ring, but also the wedding band she wore there. _Well, that was fast_, she thought to herself. The last time she was here, the two former partners were barely discussing moving in, and now they were already married. A second theory as to Ziva's bottle of water began to form in Tomblin's mind, a theory that also explained the quick wedding, but she knew better than to vocalize it.

"I would not say he was intentionally vague," Ziva finally replied. "He is often unintentionally vague." Tomblin smiled slightly. "But yes, it is somewhat sensitive."

"And it involves Mossad and the fact that Cohen is not here means that there's already something going on."

Ziva raised her eyebrows and smiled slightly, but shook her head. "His absence is unrelated," she said, and Tomblin was sure that that vagueness was intentional. "But as to Mossad's involvement, you are correct."

"The Semtex," Tomblin guessed.

"Yes."

"What about it?" She pulled up a barstool. This might be a long conversation.

Just then, however, the door opened again to admit DiNozzo. "Hey, Sweetcheeks, the steaks—." He stopped himself, a frown on his face. "I thought we were both going to explain it to her."

"It seemed silly to waste an opportunity to talk alone," Ziva replied. DiNozzo rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath.

"Well, then, Tomblin, how do you take your steak?" he asked.

"Medium rare sounds good," she replied. Ziva waited until the French doors had closed again before speaking.

"He does not know how to grill to the proper temperature," she informed the NCIS agent. "You will get your steak however well it is done."

"Good thing I'm not picky, then," Tomblin said with a shrug. "So. This situation that needs explaining. I'm guessing it has to do with the fact that the bomb used much less than the two kilograms of explosive the Coast Guard confiscated."

"No, that has been explained," Ziva replied. "Captain Mehler had it hidden in Lieutenant Yates' bag—he was the intelligence officer—in attempts to frame him if anyone were to get caught. When the bomb was larger than the captain anticipated, he thought the explosion had caused the remainder of the explosives to detonate."

"But it didn't."

"No. It had gotten wet when the lieutenant's small son had thought he was being helpful by handing the bag to his father in the shower that morning." Tomblin smiled at that, a smile that turned sad as she realized that Lt. Yates was probably in comms the morning of the attack and was therefore probably one of the fourteen killed. "The situation is that the Coast Guard confiscated two kilograms, but the supplier had sold a member of Hamas three kilograms."

"Oh," Tomblin said with realization. "That is a situation."

"Yes," Ziva confirmed. "The three kilograms were sold with the express intent for use being an attack on the Israeli midshipmen who had been aboard the _Truman_, while they are in transit."

"And since they didn't get them on the way to the _Truman_ with the two kilos, you're worried that someone will try something on the way back with the remaining kilo."

"Yes, that is among the concerns."

Tomblin took a long pull from her beer as she considered this. "So put them in the air," she finally said. "It's easier to secure a plane, and nobody will be able to get anything onto or off of it between when you confirm that it's clean and they take off." It was too overly simple, and as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew that there was no way that Ziva hadn't already considered that.

Fortunately, the look on Ziva's face was wry amusement, not offense. "That is what we will do," she said mildly. "However, it does not change the fact that there is someone in Hamas with one kilogram of a plastic explosive that cannot be detected or traced."

"Ah," Tomblin said with understanding. She was blaming the jet lag for how slow she was tonight. "Okay. Well, then, we have an entirely different set of problems. But first," she took another long pull from her beer and rose from the barstool. "I haven't eaten anything that didn't come from an airport since lunch on Saturday, and I haven't had a real conversation with anyone here since August, so I'm going outside." She caught the look of disapproval on Ziva's face and shrugged. "DiNozzo said it was a working dinner, which means I want dinner while I work. Besides, if anyone's going to do anything with the Semtex in the next hour, it's already too late to stop them, so we have nothing to lose by getting by enjoying those steaks. However done they happen to be."


	36. Chapter 36

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 36**

* * *

Bahrain, 2000 local (1700 Zulu), Monday

Despite Ziva's warning, Tomblin's steak was cooked to a decent medium rare, and that large and thick steak, combined with the salads, rolls, and various desserts and other dishes that people brought over, satisfied her need for real food before she would begin the long series of flights back to Washington the next morning.

After the required introductions and small talk, they split off, Dr. Stone talking with Bryn Freiler about something completely unrelated and likely inconsequential while the NCIS agents, former liaison, and forensics expert figured out how to tackle this next problem. "I know this sounds a bit callous," Gabi said as she took another bite of the homemade ice cream the Freilers provided, probably the one thing Bryn could make that she didn't mess up, "but how exactly is this our problem? We've accounted for all of the Semtex that's been in our possession, and they're not exactly trying to attack us."

Tomblin watched Ziva's reactions out of the corner of her eye, sure that this would be a good one. Having worked with Gabi Stone—back when she was Gabi al-Sheik—on anti-terrorism cases that involved the FBI, as well as attending FLETC with the West Point grad; and knowing Ziva from a few random cases that brought the Mossad case officer to the Middle East before her relocation, Tomblin could not see many scenarios that the two would agree on, when it came to work. Both were good at their jobs and both were very intense about them, but when it came down to it, they represented two different countries with two different cultures and two different ways of getting the job done.

To Tomblin's surprise—and, judging by Freiler's look of wide-eyed disbelief at his new senior field agent's comments, his as well—Ziva merely took the words in stride. "It is your problem because Mossad has requested NCIS's assistance, since you are familiar with the particulars of the case, and your SAC has agreed."

"RHIP," Tomblin commented with a chuckle. Gabi rolled her eyes, but the others just looked confused. "Rank hath its privileges," Tomblin explained. "The top man on the totem pole gets to do whatever he wants. And when that top man is married to a Mossad officer, well," she shrugged, "then he gets to do whatever she wants. Speaking of which," she turned to DiNozzo, "what did the people in the security office say when you informed them you were married to an agent of a foreign intelligence organization?"

"It might not have come up in conversation yet," he replied. Tomblin laughed.

"Yeah, good luck doing your job when they take your top secret clearance away during your while they investigate how much of a security threat Ziva poses," she commented.

"Lost his clearance before. Didn't change how he did his job," Gibbs stated. "Way I see it, we have twelve hours until Tomblin, Abby, and I are on a plane out of here. We can waste or time or we can solve the case."

That was Gibbs' incredibly subtle way of telling them to stay on track.

"Let's start by getting me caught up," Tomblin began. "I spent most of the case on one airplane or another. All I know about the Semtex is what my contact told me, and that's that at one point, there was seven kilos of this stuff. He knew of the two that the Coast Guard found on our failed bomber, and that's all he knew about. He tried giving me theories of where it went, but it was all bullshit. Sorry, Freiler. Being around my brothers makes me swear more. What I meant to say is that it was all bull." She took a bite of ice cream and swallowed. "I'm not saying that he knew something and just wasn't sharing. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm just saying that what he did say was a load of crap. And that's the extent of my knowledge."

"What I had heard from my source is that three kilograms were still available, after three had been sold to a Hamas bomber," Ziva informed her.

"And we know our Palestinian caught with the pirates had two on him," DiNozzo continued.

"So the question is, how do we find the remaining kilo," Tomblin summed up. "Got it." She thought about a myriad of possibilities and realized that this was far too daunting of a task for them to be tackling in one meal. "As much as I hate to sound like I'm siding with al-Sheik—"

"Stone," Gabi corrected.

"I know. At this point, it's just to annoy you. As much as I hate to sound like I'm siding with _Stone_, I don't think we have any immediate concerns." Her words got frowns from around the table and she held up her hand to stop any questions. "Our guy is going to be laying low for a while. There's a lot of attention on the _Truman_ right now, and attacking the Israelis who just got off the _Truman_ is going to get a disproportional response. Whether he knows the story behind the attack on the carrier or not, he's going to assume that we're going to be looking over the midshipmen very carefully and that there's not going to be much opportunity to attack them. So he'll hold onto the Semtex and keep it for some other bombing opportunity."

"So how do we keep him from using it then?" Freiler asked, still frowning. Tomblin shrugged.

"The same thing we're already doing. Keeping our ears to the ground, keeping our eyes open, gathering intelligence. This is going to have to be more Mossad's game than ours, not because it doesn't affect us, but because Mossad already has the network in place to be watching over Hamas. Not that we won't be doing anything, but we're not taking over the lead." She turned to Ziva. "I'll keep you informed of anything I happen to find, and all I ask in return is for the same courtesy." Ziva nodded once. "Your source that told you about the Semtex… Is there any way he can trace it back to find out who was the one who bought it?"

"I do not know," she replied. "He is not one of the operatives who answers to me directly. I do not know the specifics of his mission."

"Well, I think he'd be the best bet," Tomblin said. "He already seems to have a foot in the door in all this." She looked around and shrugged at the unsure expressions she saw. "The best we can do at this point is to make sure the midshipmen return to Israel safely, and if I'm not mistaken, plans are already in place for that, right?" Ziva nodded. "So we follow that and we keep doing what we've been doing and we hope we catch this guy before he has the chance to do any damage. Sorry if that seems all doom-and-gloom, but I don't see very many other options."

Ziva frowned but didn't comment, and a quick glance around the rest of the group yielded no one willing to contradict her. Tomblin smiled thinly as she rose from her chair. "After that warm and fuzzy conversation, I think more ice cream is in order."

She was getting ready to head back to her chair after refilling her bowl when Gibbs intercepted her, using his hand on her elbow to guide her toward the pool area and away from where people were gathered. "Vance sent the paperwork to the SecNav," he said to start the conversation. Fortunately, Tomblin knew exactly what he was talking about: after they rescued Jeff from the terrorist camp in Yemen and before she left with him to San Diego, she asked Gibbs to fill out the required paperwork to have him declared a prisoner of war. She would have done it herself, but that would have raised too many questions. "It doesn't look good," Gibbs continued. "He's got a couple of things going against him."

"I know," Tomblin said. They had had this conversation before, and she had pretty much the same one with Vance when the papers first arrived on his desk.

"According to Geneva Conventions, docs can't be held prisoner."

Tomblin rolled her eyes at Gibbs' reminder. "I think the fact that he _was_ held prisoner by people who don't follow the Geneva Conventions should trump that." It was the same argument she had given before.

"And it looks like he cooperated with his captors."

That was probably the biggest sticking point in this. When he was approached in San Diego, he was told that Tomblin was being held, and they would kill them both if he didn't cooperate. They had him fill out leave paperwork to give them a two-week head-start before anyone would come looking for him. "He used his duress phrase," she reminded Gibbs. "That's the best he could do under circumstances where a life is on the line. It's not his fault nobody picked up on it."

"I know," Gibbs replied. After all, they had had this argument before. Tomblin sighed and pulled her hair tie from her ponytail before resecuring it.

"He went through hell," she said softly. "He still is. He doesn't care so much about decorations, but he deserves something for those injuries, you know that. The only way he's going to get anything—a Purple Heart, SGLI, anything—is if he was declared a POW. Otherwise, it just looks like an off-duty injury. Worse—it looks like he was AWOL, because he was overseas after filling out leave paperwork placing him in Philly."

"Still working on it, Tomblin," Gibbs said. "Haven't given up yet. Just don't want you to get your hopes up too high." He studied her for a moment before giving a single nod and walking away.

Tomblin was still standing by the pool, her bowl of ice cream rapidly melting as she fought tears—of exhaustion, of frustration, she didn't even know why she felt like crying—when she felt more than heard someone behind her. She turned to see DiNozzo standing a respectable distance away and managed a shaky smile in his direction.

"Sorry about your grandfather," he said. She smiled sadly and nodded.

"Thanks."

He didn't walk away or ask her to talk about it, which was enough to tell her that he had something else on his mind. Wondering if this had to do with the quick wedding or Ziva drinking water, she patiently waited him out. She had three older brothers; she could wait out boys with the best of them.

Sure enough, he only lasted a few more seconds before blurting out, "Your boyfriend got my wife pregnant."

She blinked, more in confusion than anything else. She knew he wasn't accusing either Jeff or Ziva of cheating; Jeff was hardly in any condition while he was in the same time zone as Ziva to do anything that would result in a pregnancy. "DiNozzo," she said slowly. "Why don't you think about your words, then try that again?"

His eyes narrowed slightly before he took a deep breath, and tried again. "The antibiotics for the anthrax that he prescribed. They messed with her birth control."

It wasn't a funny situation, but she couldn't help but laugh. "Sorry," she said, catching herself. "First of all, Jeff didn't prescribe anything. He just gave recommendations to that surgeon—Dr. Earl?—who wrote the prescriptions, so it was Dr. Earl who should have told Ziva that antibiotics can affect birth control. Second, he was narc'ed to the max on pain meds, DiNozzo. He had three fractures in his leg, five in his arm, a broken rib, and a face beat to a pulp. I'm impressed he remembered the name doxycycline and the right adult dose. You can't expect him to remember all the side effects, too." She gave him a second. "All okay?"

"Yeah," he said. He rubbed the back of his neck. "It wasn't really a _bad_ thing, just… unexpected."

She wanted to ask if that was the reason for the wedding, but figured that wasn't any of her business and was in pretty poor taste to ask. "My brother says the same thing about my sister-in-law being pregnant with twins," she said instead. "The pregnancy was intentional, but they were only hoping for one." She gave him a supportive smile. "You're going to be a good dad, DiNozzo. And Ziva will be a good mom. After all, she already takes care of you." He gave a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a chuckle, but sounded like agreement to Tomblin. "Congratulations."


	37. Chapter 37

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 37**

* * *

Bahrain, 0600 local (0300 Zulu), Tuesday

It was a strange feeling of déjà vu as Special Agent Tony DiNozzo headed toward the departure gate at Bahrain International Airport with Ziva at his side, getting ready to say goodbye to their friends. The air-conditioned airport was a definite improvement over the scorching hot runway on base, and it was a slightly different group of friends, but in all, the situation was similar enough to the one less than three months ago to make him wonder if that was his life now that he was stationed in the Middle East, always saying good-bye to the people he had grown to think of as family before they got an airplane.

And then Ziva gave his hand a quick squeeze, and he remembered that he had a new family now. One that was growing, as strange and unbelievable as that thought was.

They found their friends near the security gate, and of the three NCIS employees about to board the flight to Amsterdam, it was, not surprisingly, Abby who spotted them first. "Tony! Ziva!" she exclaimed, rushing forward in shoes that will soon to be a pain to remove for security. She gave them both tight hugs. "I'm so glad I got to see you again!" she gushed. "It was so good to see your house, and it's an amazing house. You're going to have to send me pictures when you get everything unpacked and decorated and everything, and I mean, a lot of pictures. A lot a lot. And you're married now! I still can't believe it! We've seen it coming for _years_, but—"

"I am glad we got to see you as well, Abby," Ziva interrupted.

"You guys are gonna have to come visit DC. And soon," the forensic scientist admonished them.

"Well, if we keep having these big international cases, we'll get to see each other for work," Tony joked. "Next time, bring the McGoo and Ducky and Jimmy. It'll be like _The Brady Bunch Reunion_."

"That so wasn't as good as the real show," Abby commented.

"Not even close," DiNozzo agreed. To his surprise, Abby again launched herself at him.

"Oh, Tony, I miss your movie references so much!"

"You should try being around them 24/7. Then you would not miss then while they are gone," Ziva commented.

"And Ziva, I miss hearing you make fun of Tony!" Abby crooned, now launching herself at the Mossad officer. "Everything's just not the same with you guys gone. Nobody's making fun of Timmy or supergluing his keyboard, and Dwayne is nice but doesn't go out because he has a wife and a kid, and I don't even know the new probie's name, and—"

"They're not dead, Abby," Gibbs finally interrupted. His eyes went from his former senior field agent to his former Mossad liaison and back before he offered his hand to DiNozzo to shake. "DiNozzo," he said. He glanced over at Ziva briefly and gave a slight nod. "Good luck." And DiNozzo couldn't help but wonder if the man somehow knew something they weren't telling anyone just yet. Well, with the exception of Tomblin, just because he had to have someone to blame, and the doc who prescribed the antibiotics was a convenient target. While DiNozzo was contemplating that, the MCRT's leader had moved on and gave Ziva a hug. "Try not to kill him."

"I will try, Gibbs, but it is a daily challenge," Ziva replied, an amused sparkle in her eye.

And that left Tomblin, in the unfortunate place of never being part of that team but still having to be there. DiNozzo didn't miss the fact that she would never have a reunion with her old team like this, not with Stan Burley dead, Freiler now part of a new team, and her in a role without a team at all. "Sorry again, Tomblin," DiNozzo offered.

She nodded, a tiny smile on her lips. "I know," she replied. He just didn't know if she was talking about calling her in on a case that didn't involve her or the death of her grandfather, and he didn't know if he knew, either. "I just wanted to echo Gibbs' wishes for good luck. I have a feeling you're going to need it." She looked over at Ziva, her expression becoming serious again. "I'll keep my eyes open, and I'll let you know anything I see or hear that may be even vaguely related."

"And I will do the same," Ziva replied with a nod. "I did not get the chance to ask, but how is Dr. Cunningham?"

The smile was back on Tomblin's face. "He's doing well," she said with a nod. "He's technically been back at work for almost two months now, but he just started seeing patients again a couple of weeks ago. Still on crutches, but he's managing to get around. That is, assuming my brothers don't damage him further before I return home."

"I am glad to hear it," Ziva said. Then they heard the announcement on the other side of security that the flight would begin boarding in five minutes and said their final good-byes.

Tony and Ziva waited until the three figures of their friends and coworkers disappeared from view, and then Ziva turned to her husband. "Now what?"

"Now we go home," he replied, taking her hand and pulling her in to kiss her temple. "And then we get you a doctor's appointment."

* * *

Kim Tomblin bid Gibbs and Abby good-bye at the gate in Amsterdam and headed in the direction of her next flight, her BlackBerry already out and ready. _"Director Vance's office,"_ the secretary greeted after picking up the line.

"Is Director Vance available to talk? It's Agent Tomblin."

_"Please hold."_ Tomblin decided she didn't like NCIS's new hold music, and decided she liked it even less after listening to it for five minutes.

_"Agent Tomblin,"_ Vance finally greeted. _"How's Bahrain?"_

"As hot as ever," she replied. "Unfortunately, I didn't get to enjoy it long, on account of the fact that the case unrelated to terrorism was solved before my final flight landed." The director remained silent. "I couldn't begin to know how to do your job, sir, but when I'm the only agent in my job, sending me off to the Middle East every time there's a suspicion of terrorist activity doesn't seem to be it. Especially when I'm on emergency leave."

_"I agree,"_ Vance said, surprising her speechless, which didn't happen very often. He didn't elaborate, forcing Tomblin to try to guess what he was saying.

"You're giving me another agent?" she finally asked.

_"I'm doing you one better. How would you like a task force?"_

"Task force? That sounds like something involving the FBI."

_"And Homeland Security, SDPD, LAPD, and maybe ICE."_

"I don't think I'm following, sir."

_"We need more cooperation between sister agencies and local police, especially when it comes to fighting terrorism. 9/11 happened because we're too damn fractured and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's up to. Some of the other directors heard about your position and want to get in on it."_ She still didn't know what to think of what he was saying; she wasn't sure if she even understood it. _"You're still in charge. That was the only thing I insisted on. As for the rest, that's for you to figure out. I'm sending you the contact information of the rest of your team. The first meeting's scheduled for two weeks from today in our San Diego office."_

"You're giving me an entire task force without running anything by me?"

_"I do it to Gibbs all the time. Get used to it. And Tomblin?"_

"Yes, sir?"

_"Good luck. You're going to need it. Some of these agents and officers have been in anti-terrorism since you were in junior high, and they're not going to appreciate having to listen to you tell them how to do it."_

She gave a slight chuckle. "Sir, you obviously didn't know me when I was with the Corps."

* * *

_A/N: That last bit may or may not be foreshadowing for a spin-off series. I say 'may or may not', because I'm still trying to figure out how to make it work. I started on a story that would be a spin-off and sequel to _Falling on Unyielded Ground _and posted on Fictionpress, but I don't know if I like how it's going, and the opener might be better for an actual NCIS story. I don't know. I'll play with it, and some of my other plot bunnies, for a while and see what happens. There's one more chapter on this story, and then keep your eyes open on FFN and Fictionpress for more of...something._


	38. Chapter 38: Epilogue

**Timing in Everything: Chapter 38 - Epilogue**

_A/N: I know it's a day early, but I just got exciting about posting the last chapter :) And in case you don't notice the date stamp in the first line, it's two years later. More A/N at the end._

* * *

Cairo, December 2013

NCIS Special Agent Kim Cunningham glanced around the airport terminal, not seeing anyone familiar and not expecting to. She had a feeling of nervous excitement in her gut; it was her first big op since taking over the Cairo office in July. In fact, now that she thought about it, it was her first real field mission since she was pregnant with her now twelve-month-old, and while Sydney was adorable and a lot of fun to have around—maybe less so now that she was walking and getting into everything and wreaking havoc wherever she went—she sure did have a tendency to mess with mom's career.

As if knowing what she was thinking, she heard Mossad operative David Cohen's teasing voice in her ear: _"So what does Dr. Cunningham think of you leaving behind your toddler to play with guns and bombs?"_

"Probably the same thing DiNozzo thinks of your boss being here," Cunningham replied without hesitation. "But Jeff doesn't complain as loudly. That's why I keep him around."

_"I am in the van,"_ Ziva David's voice protested. _"It is not real field work."_

"And I'm sure DiNozzo agrees with you," the NCIS agent said sarcastically. She could hear Cohen's chuckle over the line and something that sounded almost like 'the mom squad'.

It had taken more than two years since the _Truman_ bombing, but both Kim and Ziva kept to their promises: they kept their eyes and ears open for anything even remotely related to the missing Semtex, and after a few misfires, they were sure that they finally had the right guy with the right explosives. The intel had only come in the week before, and they had to act fast on it: he planned to use it to blow up the non-stop flight from Cairo to JFK in New York on Gulf Air. And the fact that the explosives were produced privately a few decades ago meant they weren't tagged for easy detection. If this guy knew what he was doing—and Kim doubted they would send someone who didn't—he could place his kilo brick of Semtex in his suitcase and walk on the plane without getting a second glance from a lazy security guard.

Which brought her to the international ticketing gate at her new local airport, intentionally standing out like a sore thumb in her NCIS windbreaker while Cohen was undercover—because he didn't know how to operate any other way—keeping a discreet distance from their mark, and Ziva sitting with a couple of NCIS tech guys and two guys from Homeland Security in the van. It was a whole mix of Israelis and alphabet soup, but in the two years since Vance gave her a task force and told her to have fun, Cunningham had learned to make it work for her.

And sometimes it _was_ fun. Like when she was stalking a would-be suicide bomber in the Cairo airport.

_"The bag has just been checked,"_ one of the Homeland Security agents informed the team. _"We'll be pulling it off the line in two minutes. Repeat: black Samsonite roller, checked to JFK on Gulf Air, will be pulled off the line in less than two minutes."_ Kim rolled her eyes at the protocols, but didn't admonish him. They were the only ones who could hear the conversation anyway.

_"He is approaching the security line,"_ Cohen informed them. It took her another minute, but then Kim spotted the mark: a completely unremarkable, middle-aged, Middle Eastern man in a dark business suit with a computer bag slung over his shoulder. He looked exactly like a thousand other men surrounding them. Even Cohen was dressed the same way, much to his complaints. He was much more comfortable in khakis and a tee-shirt.

Cunningham walked in a parallel path to the mark, also headed toward security, keeping him in her peripheral vision without looking directly at him. When she reached the emigration desk she gave a nod and smile to the security officers seated there, getting the same in return. Even if she hadn't briefed them on the basics of the operation, that would have been their response. They were used to seeing her, between security conferences at the airport and her frequent flights out—especially to Bahrain, to check in with DiNozzo and Ziva and meet with the anti-terrorism analysts—and her presence was never questioned.

She crossed through security and waited on the other side. Just approaching where he showed his boarding pass and ID was the mark, looking no more nervous now than he had ten minutes before, or a year before when his picture was taken for his new passport. He was one cool customer, she had to give him that.

_"He is through security,"_ Cohen announced a few minutes later, more for the benefit of those in the van than Cunningham.

"I got him," Cunningham replied.

_"We finished the search of the suitcase,"_ an out-of-breath Homeland Security agent informed her. _"We got it. One-point-oh-three kilograms of PETN and RDX hidden in a hairdryer, matches the composition of the _Truman_ bomb exactly."_

"Excellent," Cunningham replied, making her move toward the mark. "Cohen, fall back, but keep him in view in case anything happens." They had discussed how to proceed after this point: they could let him get on the plane and let the guys in New York pick him up at JFK when the plane didn't explode, or they could pick him up right here. Both Kim and Ziva were in favor of option two, and not because it meant that they got to do a little bit of the field work that they both missed. They didn't know what his plan B was in case the suitcase didn't explode and take everyone with it, and they didn't want to find out. In the end, they decided that Kim would take him into custody; Cohen and Ziva had to preserve their anonymity, after all, and the two Homeland Security agents didn't have the same authorization from the Egyptian government to operate in that country that Cunningham had.

Besides, she was in charge. It was her op, and if she wanted to be the one arresting the bastard, that was her right.

The mark's eyes met Cunningham's, and apparently he saw something there he didn't want to see, turning and barreling down the terminal at full speed. "Damn it, I hate it when they run!" Kim complained as she took after him.

In the end, she was younger and faster, and the running shoes she wore for this exact scenario were better than the man's dress shoes; they had barely passed two gates when Kim tackled him to the ground amidst sounds of surprise from the crowd around them. "It does not matter," the man said victoriously as she handcuffed him. "The plane will still explode. All you have done is make sure that I do not explode with it."

"We got your suitcase, moron," she informed him as she pulled him to his feet. She saw camera phones pointed in her direction and tried not to smile. They could have done this without anyone knowing—that was the plan Ziva and Cohen were fans of—but the good guys needed a win, for the sake of the moral of everyone who had to go through security checks at the airport. Sometimes they just needed a reminder of why they were doing it.

* * *

Tony DiNozzo was watching ZNN with one eye and his son with the other, making sure the little brat—he didn't usually refer to his son that way, but since Ziva left the evening before, that's what he had been—didn't manage to get into anything that would necessitate either a trip to the emergency room or a call to a professional cleaning company. Somehow, everyone had neglected to tell him just how much kids were able to get into at that age.

The sound of the door opening got the attention of both of the DiNozzo men, the shorter of which immediately started running—well, toddling, but he was trying to run—toward the door in response. Tony swept him off the ground before he could get too far. "I am home," Ziva called out in Hebrew, the first half of the 'all clear' message they had worked out a while before.

"Welcome back," DiNozzo replied in the same language, completing the message to let her know that it was just the two of them in the house, no bogymen of any sort holding anyone hostage. Ziva walked into view, an exhausted smile on her face. "I've been watching ZNN," Tony informed her as he handed the squirming mass of little boy over to his mother. "They've been playing the story every half hour or so."

Sure enough, the reporter's next words were, _"And we've had some exciting news come out of Egypt today. Earlier this morning at the Cairo International Airport, United States federal agents apprehended a man intent on blowing up the non-stop flight to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. We have Sarah Hoffman on the scene."_

_"Thank you, Janet,"_ a second reporter said, the camera now on the image of a tall brunette reporter standing next to Kim Cunningham, making the NCIS special agent look positively tiny in comparison. _"I'm here with Naval Criminal Investigative Service's Special Agent Kim Cunningham, the special agent in charge of the field office here in Cairo. Agent Cunningham, what can you tell us about what happened here today?"_

_"Sarah, this is a perfect example of what happens when everything goes _right_,"_ Kim—it had been a year and a half since she had gotten married, and DiNozzo still couldn't think of her as 'Cunningham'—commented._ "Through the constant vigilance of intelligence agencies in the United States and internationally, we were able to come across information of a plan to detonate a bomb on a plane today. Arresting him and removing any explosive material from the vicinity of the airport came through good investigative skills and international cooperation. On behalf of NCIS and the other United States agencies who participated in this mission, I want to thank our international partners who remain committed to joining us in the fight against terrorism."_ DiNozzo knew the last line was a not-so-subtle dig at Pakistan; ever since the May 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, relations between the two nations weren't going quite as smoothly as they once were.

_"How is it that our suspect was able to get the explosives past the security screening? Are you saying that our airports aren't safe?"_

_"Not at all. Air travel continues to be the safest way to travel, and with the continued vigilance of security personnel around the globe and the continued cooperation of air passengers, we will keep it that way. Our suspect had in his possession an explosive that was manufactured illegally and without detection tags. The explosive and detonators were contained within a hairdryer, and had we not known what we were looking for, we could have missed it. We're recommending increased hand searches of luggage containing items that could be used to conceal explosive devices and are working to improve our detection devices to allow them to pick up this and similar explosives in the future. In the meantime, we rely on strong intelligence and the continued cooperation of our international partners in our mission to fight terrorism."_

_"Thank you, Special Agent Cunningham. This is Sarah Hoffman, reporting from Cairo International Airport."_ Ziva picked up the remote and clicked off the television.

"Kim did well," she commented as she carried their son toward the kitchen.

"So did you," her husband replied. She gave him an amused look.

"I meant with dealing with the reporter," she replied.

"Oh. Well, then, so did you. After all, you didn't even have to talk to one." Ziva chuckled at his response.

"Have you thought about what you want for dinner?" she asked, setting the boy down in his high chair and pouring out some Cheerios for him to play with. Neither parent bothered believing that he would _eat_ them instead of play with them; sure enough, it was only seconds later before a thrown Cheerio hit DiNozzo squarely in the forehead.

"Pizza?" Tony asked hopefully, getting an excited babbling response and more thrown pieces of cereal from their son. Ziva gave the boy, then his father, an exasperated look, and Tony just grinned.

The issue of the missing Semtex had been hanging over them for over two years. It was good to have that finally over and done with, and until the next crisis came around, he was content just sitting around and enjoying some family time.

**The End**

* * *

_A/N: Yes, it's the end of another story :( I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it just as much. I have a few ideas for future stories, but I'm not quite sure how to make any of them work. As I mentioned in the last chapter, I have an opening that could work for either another Tomblin story or an NCIS story, depending on which direction I want to take it. I also have an idea for an NCIS story involving one of the Tomblin twins getting into trouble in DC and having to deal with Gibbs and co, but nothing's written on that one, and ideas for an original story completely unrelated to anything I've written thus far (but that's just an idea; I don't know how to get it started and make it work). Thoughts on what you would like to see next would be appreciated._

_I think this story arc that I have going through my series will last one or two more stories, and then it's time to retire it. It pains me to say that, but with how little inspiration I get from the canon show these days and how hard it is to think of cases that would involve both the Bahrain team and the DC team, it's getting harder and harder to come up with fresh ideas, which I think you've noticed. I do appreciate everyone who's stuck with reading/reviewing/lurking/whatever; I wouldn't be posting anything anywhere if it wasn't for you._


End file.
